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Holiday apartment with no WiFi


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I am going to France on holiday in September to an apartment that does not have WiFi or any other internet connection. How can I get internet access to my Samsung Note 8 without going to an Internet Café or any other public place with free WiFi? (I do not have a smartphone). I have heard about Globalgig which may be an option but I have no regular long-term need for this. Are there any other devices you can buy reasonably cheaply that act essentially as mobile wifi routers?
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Just a thought.

You'll be on holiday. You have a phone, so if anybody really needs you that badly, they can ring you.

Not the answer you wanted I know, but think about it.

Will your business world come to an.end if you don't answer every email?
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There is an interesting book by the current or possibly ex CEO of SAS Airlines. He believes that if he cannot go away for 4 weeks without the company needing to contact him then there is something wrong. I.E. if the company is set up correctly with capable people given authority then no one individual is indispensable.
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Whilst the OP makes no mention of this as being a business need, and whilst I totally agree with the two previous posts, it's regrettable but if, like me, you are self-employed, freelance or a sole trader, it can be tricky being unobtainable for a couple of weeks. That said, it's still do-able. I manage to be away and with a very intermittent and sketchy internet connection for periods of up to 10 weeks.

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I am retired. I can assure everyone that, were I still working, I would have no desire to see work e-mails when on holiday! However, I do some voluntary work and am happy to deal with e-mail relating to that and to e-mail from family and friends. That is only a small part of my requirement. Access to the internet is extremely useful for holiday purposes - restaurant reviews, maps, tourist information etc, etc. All of this could probably be found in book form but using the internet is much more convenient.
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[quote user="crépuscule"]I am retired. I can assure everyone that, were I still working, I would have no desire to see work e-mails when on holiday! However, I do some voluntary work and am happy to deal with e-mail relating to that and to e-mail from family and friends. That is only a small part of my requirement. Access to the internet is extremely useful for holiday purposes - restaurant reviews, maps, tourist information etc, etc. All of this could probably be found in book form but using the internet is much more convenient.[/quote]

Could I ask who your Internet provider is in the UK (there is a reason)?

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I know you don't want "public" wifi, but as a last resort many tourist offices offer free wifi, and you could perhaps lurk in a semi-private corner to do your research. In my département of the Vendée, the county council has set up a load of wifi hotspots, usually near major tourist attractions, where you can use the internet for 24 hours on payment (online) of a couple of euros. (On their website they say it's 1€ per day, but I seem to remember it is now actually 2€.). I did find this very useful before I had my own wifi connection, and was doing work that involved a lot of online research. I set up my "office" in my car, and parked near the hotspot.

Maybe the area you are going to will have something similar.

Angela
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If your an existing Orange (and I think BT) Internet user in the UK then you can use Orange Hotspots in France. All you need is your email name and password from said providor to login. Alternativly you can buy time/data and it is secure. There are hundreds and thousands of Orange Hotspots in France.
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Quillan..where did you get this information? As a UK BT customer I'm blissfully unaware of it. The only thing I believe you can do is access Fon hotspots (if you can find one) using your BT Openzone subscription (if you have one) and as you will probably know, Fon hotspots are generally Other People's Wifi...so, unless you're in someone else's house, very close to someone else's house (and always assuming they've signed up to Fon) or in a block of flats where the signal is strong enough for you to tap into, you've got little chance of getting online using this method.

And I think that BT's French partner for Fon is SFR....

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I Googled 'Orange Hotspots France'. I think SFR has a reciprocal deal with a UK company but I wasn't looking for them yet it came up in the search. In their case I think it is Vodaphone.

The Orange Hotspots are other peoples WiFi as well but it is secure. Go to any village or town and walk around it won't take long to find one. They are all called the same, simply 'Orange'. Even more alarming round here is to walk around and see who has turned security off completely on their router.

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Well, another shining example of Anglo-French co-operation, then. BT tells me that their French partner is SFR, you tell me that SFR think their UK partner is Vodafone! [8-)][:D]

I can see the force of Orange(UK) and FT/Orange France having something going on, for example....

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I know Betty and it is a long way to come only to find out they are wrong. I do know for sure that if you use a UK Orange email address and password it gets you into the French Orange Hotspots as some of my guests have used it. With regards to BT they may of course make 'deals' with more than one company. Hopefully one day it won't matter who you are with just as long as you have an email address and password although I suspect you're more likely to find rocking horse manure before then.
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I can confirm that the fon hotspots are SFR customers, its default setting is enabled.

If you go to the Fon website you can search the area for hotspots using Google Earth, before the SFR deal there was one in my village, now there are scores of them, all labelled SFR.

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[quote user="Quillan"]Even more alarming round here is to walk around and see who has turned security off completely on their router.[/quote]An unsecured WiFi signal does not automatically mean open internet access, try to connect to one or two of them.

Many services, Fon and Orange partage included, use a challenge system where you can connect to the actual signal but then have to get past a login page or some other sort of authentication.

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I know that silly [;-)] . These are the routers (shown as Livebox-3b7c for example) not the Fon or Orange Hotspots and yes you can connect without a password and download whatever you want. Android devices show them as Unsecured whereas Orange and Fon show as Open, well they do on Android 4.4.4 and did on previous versions.
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[quote user="Quillan"]

[quote user="crépuscule"]I am retired. I can assure everyone that, were I still working, I would have no desire to see work e-mails when on holiday! However, I do some voluntary work and am happy to deal with e-mail relating to that and to e-mail from family and friends. That is only a small part of my requirement. Access to the internet is extremely useful for holiday purposes - restaurant reviews, maps, tourist information etc, etc. All of this could probably be found in book form but using the internet is much more convenient.[/quote]

Could I ask who your Internet provider is in the UK (there is a reason)?

[/quote]

Sorry, I failed to answer this question. My Internet provider in the UK is Virgin Media.

FWIW, I have a PAYG basic mobile phone with Vodafone. This switches to SFR when I go to France.
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Basically, unless you override it to manually select a specific network, your mobile phone will just select the French operator with the best signal.  Mine, for example, switches almost daily between Orange and Bouygues,

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But I understand SFR and Vodafone have some kind of tie-in, Betty. I was originally told by Vodafone to use SFR in France. So if my phone selects Orange or Bouygues or whatever, I do a manual selection and fix it on SFR.

Sorry, I am not capable of answering the OP's question...

Angela
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Once upon a time you may have been right, Loiseau, but, think about it...If your phone automatically selects the best connection, why change it to a worse one? The cost of your calls made when roaming is fixed, so Vodafone can't and won't charge you a different rate for using Bouygues or Orange because they can't. They may want to encourage you to stick with SFR, but they can no longer (I think that years ago they possibly could) make you do so. It may be in their interests to try and make you use their partners, but it's in yours to get the best reception available. If you leave your network setting choices on "automatic" then you get the best reception available wherever you happen to be.

In fact, this, from the Vodafone user forum, explains:

 

We have compiled the most commonly asked

questions from the forum. We will periodically update this thread if any

other questions are asked.

 

  • To use EuroTraveller, do I have to connect to a Vodafone partner network? 

No. In the past some promotions required you to select a specific partner network but this is no longer the case.

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I have just been looking at this issue for myself and discovered that Three in the UK have a deal which allows you to use your UK sim -PAYG or monthly subscription - in France for no further charges. There is a limit to how much time abroad it can be used for, and if you use it abroad for extended visits (more than 30 days at a time, three times per year) they will cut you off.

Might be worth looking at?

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  • 2 weeks later...
I've been doing some more research as we are thinking of ditching Numericable and going over to a mobile solution for our visits to France.

The latest thing I've come across is JoeMobile (www.joemobile.fr). Its parent is SFR, and obviously it runs on SFR's network. There are two different monthly plans, but they have the advantage for us part-timers that you can switch the service on and off at any time. They charge for whole months, starting from the date of activation or re-activation (if you've turned the service off), so if you turn it off before the expiry of a month then they will not charge you for the next month. The interesting one for us is 3Gb of data and inclusive calls to France (landlines and mobiles) and internationally (generally landlines) for 20€ per month. The internet usage includes tethering and VOIP, and 10 days usage elsewhere in Europe per year at the same rates as in France.

Has anyone any experience of JoeMobile please?

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Thanks for all the comments following my original question posted on 26/6. To cut a long story short, my solution was to buy a smartphone! As an existing Virgin TV & broadband customer I got a Samsung phone for £11 per month. This is not what I intended doing at the outset but it seems less hassle than the alternatives. I did buy a TP-LINK M5350 but I then discovered that the PAYG SIMs for it only last 30 days which is no use for an occasional user like me. I have since handed the device back to the shop for a full refund. The M5350 seems like a good idea for mobile WiFi for regular users but not for occasional users.
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