Recharging the mobicarte with less than € 10 extends validity for 1 month, but any recharge of € 10 or more prolongs validity by 6 months.
So keeping an Orange mobicarte permanently active maybe doesn't pay off, if you need it only for a week per year in France.
But even if you include the inital cost for the purchase of an Orange mobicarte (at least at eBay) a month of unlimited data costs € 19 (€ 14 for a SIM including € 5 of credit and shipping + € 5 recharge to have enough credit for the Internet Max option).
In my opinion that's still rather cheap. With my German postpaid O2 SIM I would get 2.1 MB of volume in France for € 19.
