France Local Sims

bonalymac

Four of us are going to France for 3 weeks in July, and we wanted sugegstions on buying a local SIM for keeping in touch.

None of us will make many calls back to the UK (and we'd probably just use our UK contract SIMS for that anyway).

So all we are looking for is local France to France cals & texts, all of which will be short, just agreeing wher eto meet etc.

I've searched through the forum, but there are so many messages, some of which are pretty technical, that it is very confusing.

We did think about going to Carrefour and buying 4 sim cards.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks

redux

Compare them on http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/france.html

As you can see, the arrival of virtual brands hasn't caused a wave of price-cutting; calls are all about 40c/min

But if you visit the network websites (click the logo on the PPGSM page), look for favourite number options or unlimited packages - two I'd suggest are SFR has an add-on option that means 30c a call up to an hour, or Orange has illimit! add-on packages

[and MSE forums still has the acute-accent censor :rolleyes: ]


If you can make do with only texts, then O2 UK has inclusive texts usable abroad at 4 for 1, and for the others look into mobile Java clients that send an sms equivalent via a data connection. I'd suggest Vyke, which will give you $1 trial credit, enough for 50 messages, and your network will charge you a penny or two for the data used. Vyke Lite, that is; their Pro product stays online all the time and uses up more data by pinging the network checking for new messages

bonalymac

MAny thanks for the feedback.

I'll now go and explore these options

Ta

Colin

redux

O2 contracts, I should have specified. I don't know if the same applies with the bundles on Pay & Go

bonalymac

Thanks I'll bera that in mind. We're all on contracts already

pigeonpie

good luck finding it on the Orange.fr website (not a work of art) but I think it's still the case that you can top up an Orange fr SIM, then subscribe to an option which gives you unlimited calls to the Orange network and landlines for 3€ a day between 7am and 5pm. It used to be unlimited x network and 9am - 7pm so it does change (may have changed back since I last used it). However french networks/mobile usage is not as competitively priced as in the UK and you may find it cheaper to use your UK mobile on roaming for short calls.