Prepaid phone service for use in France

[oz_perspective]

Hi all,

I am looking at spending a week or two in France and am after some advice regarding the mobile carriers there. I figured Orange/Virgin France would be a good bet, but has anyone had any experience with either of them? The info I can't seem to find is whether myself (Australian citizen) can simply purchase and activate a prepaid kit without any issue. Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,

Salv

 

[AlphaVictor]

Hi,
Perhaps not the answer you were looking for but I use a service called Backchat. Prepaid SIM, and reloadable for use around the world. You get a new number which you keep, as long as u use it every 3 months or so. Had mine for a year now.

Cant find their website, but I bought mine at Travelscene American Express (Clarence St Sydney)

Calling Cards has some stuff but not the rates

 

[mhen]

Hi Salv

A friend and I were in France for 2 weeks in May. We wanted local sims mainly so we could ring each other when out separately. On first day walked into a shopping centre (in Lille as we had just got off Eurostar) and asked at Orange phone store. No problems in getting 2 prepaid sims. Young lad in shop set them up and loaded credit etc as the instructions when you load credit, recharge etc are in very very fast french. However kit did include summary of instructions in English.

 

[ellen10]

mhen, we wish to to the same thing in France next month. Did you use your local unlocked mobile phone?
Can you tell us how much a sim card would cost and do you purchase a certain amount of credit.
Can you use them to text home to Australia.
Thanking you for any advice

 

[oz_perspective]

Thanks AlphaVictor and mhen. I will explore both of those options.

Cheers,

Salv

 

[mhen]

mhen, we wish to to the same thing in France next month. Did you use your local unlocked mobile phone?
Can you tell us how much a sim card would cost and do you purchase a certain amount of credit.
Can you use them to text home to Australia.
Thanking you for any advice

Hi ellen10
Yes used our Australian unlocked phones. I don't have receipt to hand, but from memory each sim card cost 15 euros and had a small amount of credit included. We each purchased a 10 euro recharge as well which the phone guy loaded for us. The recharges had 15 days validity when loaded. We were only in France for 14 days so it was ok to load immediately. If we had been there for for longer we would have delayed recharge till needed. We used phones for local calls, brief international calls (check voicemail) and local and international sms.

Have just remembered the shop was a PhoneHouse and they offered a number of prepaid carriers. Luckily the young lad had good english (much better than my poor French) so when I explained what we wanted and estimate of number of calls etc he selected the Orange sim card. I'll have a look in the morning to see if I still have the summary in english.

 

[mhen]

ellen10

Finally found receipt, yes it was 15 euros for a sim. When are you going to France? I have one sim which should have validity till early Nov. Happy to give to you if you want. PM me.

mhen