Going to france in a couple of weeks, will need a sim to call the friend i am going with etc. and also for internet as there is no wifi where i’m staying.
Does anyone know what sim card i’d need to get, the most important thing would be unlimited internet.
and how much is it likely to cost, is it a lot more than here?

Cheers

vodafone euro traveller passport puts you on your UK plan when in europe for £3 a day, so if you have bundled data, you use that.

We go to France for 4+wks each year and used to use a local SIM, from SFR for data to keep in touch with clients. Then when we were on O2 we’d buy 200Mb of data in a package for about £200 I think. Now We can use Vodafone package for £3 a day (on the days we use it, but lets say every day for a month) so £90 for a month’s access using my bundled data.

£3/day=£90/month. Shockingly expensive.

I’m looking into this as well. Is there nothing in France equivalent to the typical UK PAYG deal, e.g. Vodafone text and web:

Top up at least £10 on this Pay as you go SIM and you’ll get 300 standard UK texts and 500MB of UK web access

That would cover most people’s holiday needs. There must be similar unlimited deals for e.g £20.

edit: clearly the local French SIM would have 500mb of internet accessed through France, before anyone posts without noting it’s a roaming issue, not that e.g vodafone only allow access to .co.uk sites.

I assume if you just want data then it could be done, obv I want to maintain my number ofr contact whilst over there as well as have data access.

I could use a mifi dongle with a data sim, but for simplicity Im happy with the vodafone product.

Are there any issues with not having a permanent French address for buying the local sim cards? For some countries dont you need to be resident to buy them?

ive certainly bought an SFR one before but I think I had to pay by card or something.

i had to register mine, but they only caught up with me after about 6 months. it was PAYG and i had to send a photocopy of my passport to SFR ❗

my impression of french mobile PAYG networks was that they were about 15 years behind the uk in terms of price and service. in fairness, the signal in the alps was pretty good though.

coming back to the uk was a revelation in terms of mobile contracts. £10 a month and i get 300 mins, unltd text and unltd data.

£10 on SFR would get me SFA in comparison.

/rant over.

yeah hopefully there is a french network which is cheap.

I live in France and use Bouygues which is a quality service and Free which is silly cheap and works OK: 2e/month for an hour of calls in France and 60 SMS. 20e/month unlimited with Internet (Internet also unlimited but it slows down after 3Go). That makes your £10 look expensive Monkey.

Ed but can you get a pay as go SIM rather than a monthly contract and how much are they?

Yup, Orange do them for less than 10e IIRC but their site is down at the minute. Googling “carte SIM prépayée” shows half a dozen other French operators do prepaid SIM cards at less than 10e.

Ed – nowt to do with me, but how is 20 Eu cheaper than a tenner?

Ed – nowt to do with me, but how is 20 Eu cheaper than a tenner?

I think it’s a question of what you get for the €20 rather than a direct exchange rate. Although it’s not too clear.

I think it’s because here unlimited Internet normally means up to 500mb, but that one is 3gb and more at a slower speed.

how about this site?
http://www.dataroam.co.uk/collections/data-sim-cards-pay-monthly/products/french-30-day-data-sim-card