Phoning Home from France

lyndapoyroo

Hello
I phone home on my mobile from France or family call me in France which makes it slightly cheaper although I still have to pay to recieve a call. I am on an o2 tarriff and always ensure I pay extra for international roaming.

However I am sure there is a cheaper way, even if it is to buy mobile phone on a French network.

Can anyone advise me please. .

JPR

If you have access to a French landline try:

http://appeldiscount.com/

Not sure of the rates from a French Mobile to the UK but certainly much cheaper to call from UK to a French mobile than on your UK one using the numbers on the Callchecker on this site.

redux

I think a French SIM would help. You may not need to get a phone as well as many phones can be unlocked from their original network; Nokias are easiest (not all of them) - see the thread at the top of the board.

As well as the French SIM card, you can look into calling cards and callback services, as making international calls directly would still not be cheap (50p/min). Calling cards would add maybe 1 or 2 pence to the cost of a local number, and callback would cost about 15p per minute to UK landlines.

Info on the French networks can be found at http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/france.html

The basic tariffs in France are still pretty expensive for ordinary calls, but there are interesting call bundles appearing.

I think PPGSM has got the SFR La Carte offer wrong; it is €0.30 per call up to an hour, between 7h and 17h for a monthly fee of €5.
http://www.sfr.fr/info_nouveautes/offres_reseau/toutes_les_offres/la_carte/

Orange has 3 interesting unlimited call bundles - les infinis - €3 for calls on one day, either between 7h and 17h, or evening 21h to midnight, or a weekend bundle for €10.
http://animation.orange.fr/osa/fiche.php?SA=MOBINF

and I've just discovered another bundle - Duo Journée - one hour to all networks, and 15 sms, to be used in a day, for €3
http://animation.orange.fr/osa/fiche.php?SA=MOBDJO


So that gets you a way to make quite a lot of calls cheaply. French mobile networks do not have free 0800 calls, but calling card access via ordinary area codes should be possible, and I wonder if cheap call-through numbers 0811 and 0821 would too - maybe unlikely, like 0844 and 0870 here

For calling cards, the Bizon card from Nobelcom has very cheap calls; it should be reasonably unlikely that their access numbers are blocked, but I do not know for sure. Before buying, try one of their numbers from your phone, and see if you get asked for your PIN.
https://www.bizon.us

If you want to try out 0811 and 0821 numbers, look at
https://www.appellemonde.fr https://www.telerabais.com
but I wouldn't count on it

Callback would be a fallback possibility after these options, or if you only wanted to make a couple of minutes of calls without buying a bundle, and as I said, would be about 13p or 15p per minute.

https://www.callbackworld.com
https://www.expat-telecom.com/Cob/expatelecom_uk/HomePage.asp
https://www.enlinea.com
https://www.gsm2world.com/

Then for people to call you from home, you can use the MSE Callchecker to find providers from landlines, maybe from 8p to 15p per minute.

People calling you from UK O2, Orange and Virgin contracts would be able to use an 07744 callthrough number to reach you from their inclusive minutes. look at Victorconnect and Yourcallworld.
__

There is another possibility, to use one of the various global roaming SIMs. One would give you outgoing calls at about 8p per minute but this relies on callback with another provider and could change any time, and the cheap calls to it are in some flux as well. Another would give you outgoing calls at about 14p per minute, enable some people to call you for the same cost as calling a UK mobile, or would allow you cheap call diversion to it of incoming calls to your O2 number. This SIM costs about £35 though, so you'd only really consider it if you would be there longer and expected people to call you more than you call them.

I hope this isn't too long to take it all in. Ask for any more info if you wish.

And, yes, as the post above says, landline to landline is much cheaper. If you can't make outgoing calls directly on landlines, you can still use a callback service; this would need to be one with dedicated trigger numbers rather than a single one that recognises the caller ID

lyndapoyroo

Thank you very much Redex and JPR. So much information. Unfortunately we don't have access to a landline, only mobile. I will have a look at the information properly tomorrow when I am not so tired. Thank you both for your advice and for taking the trouble to reply.