pay as you go mobile telephone options

[french knocker]

I'm planning a visit to France to purchase a property. Assuming I can unlock the handset, is it more cost effective to pre purchase a French SIM card for my existing UK mobile or is it better to buy a cheap 'pay as you go' mobile in France upon my arrival?

What is the typical price for a French 'pay as you go' mobile. Can I pre purchase on line from the UK; if so, any web addresses please?

[Nick Trollope]

PAYG 'phones are quite expensive here. I suggest you unlock your UK 'phone & buy a card here (plenty of outlets). You can buy a SIM card from (yikes, I've forgotten the name - 0044-something..) in the UK, but the buy in FRance option is cheaper.

Bear in mind that French PAYG top-ups expire after not very long, as they did in the UK a few years ago. In a month in some cases. You will keep the number for 6 months after that, then you must start again.

I think it was Will-le-Conq (either of them) who surmised that France was not a good place to buy a mobile in. (forgiving my grammar, please).

 

[sue-J]

See the other post yesterday on this topic, a RIIING sim lets you receive calls & texts free in most of Europe without paying roaming charges. About thirty pounds with ten euros free credit. Call charges have a 25 cent set-up fee, plus 0.29 euros upward per minute depending on what & where you're calling. So it may be useful to have one if you have a lot of incoming calls from outside France. For me this is much cheaper than using a French SIM.

There's a call cost calculator on www.riiing.com and you can buy them online in the uk at

http://www.freedom-mobiles.co.uk/riiing-international-roaming-sim-card.html

amongst many other places.

Top up by the riiing web site.

Sue

[Ecossais]

French Knocker,

 

You can get an idea of difference in the cost of PAYG mobiles by comparing the prices at the UK and French websites of Carphone Warehouse: http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/commerce/servlet/gben-Home and http://www.phonehouse.fr/commerce/servlet/frfr-Home (Offres prépayés)

 

Most seem to be around 25-30% dearer in France.  The cheapest is around €60, but remember you’ll pay €30 for a French PAYG SIM – French SIMs are expensive compared with the £5-£10 you pay in the UK.

 

Your cheapest option may be to have your UK mobile unlocked and then buy a French PAYG SIM card.  You should be able to get your mobile unlocked for about £10 – although big chains like Carphone Warehouse, Phones 4U etc wont offer this service they will be able to advise you where you can get it done locally.

 

You can unlock most Nokia phones yourself by obtaining the codes from internet sites such as http://www.trycktill.com/eng/ - it’s fairly easy to do but you do need to follow the instructions very carefully!

 

The only downside to unlocking a UK mobile and using a French SIM is that you’ll need to manually configure the settings for SMS (text messaging) MMS (picture messaging), Voicemail, etc.

[sue-J]

These people unlock nokias for £2.99, fast service by email, and works very well.

Pay by cc, Nochex or Paypal

www.ezmobile-2u.co.uk/

Dixons/Currys are currently selling the Nokia 1100 for £29.95 with free next day delivery to the UK again, order online. Locked to Orange, so you get a 'free' Orange PYG SIM, unlocking by email takes about an hour or so and is very straightforwards.

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/Mobiles+and+Telephones/Mobile+Phones/Pay+As+You+Go+Mobiles/NOKIA/1100/434704

If you try unlocking yourself you only have five goes to get it right...

sue

[Keith]

I have an french orange sim card in my british nokia phone which works well.

The problem with this and all french pay-as-you-go cards is that the credit runs out very quickly (within 14 days for a 10 euro mobicarte). If you do not top it up in a certain period your phone number is stopped and your sim card is useless. 

As far as I know you can only buy the top-ups in France and you can only activate them when visiting France.

I have just bought a new sim card from the united mobile phone shop online which seems to be a better bet (I hope!) The credit lasts 9 months and you can buy top ups online and activate them anywhere. The calls are a bit more expensive than the french orange in France or the t-mobile in England, but are much cheaper than the french orange in England or t-mobile card in France. It also costs nothing to receive calls with this card.

Keith

[Rjpfrancais]

Kieth,

I looked at the United Mobile shop (http://www.united-mobile.com/home.asp) and it appears to me that you have to pay for incoming calls at 0.39 euros per minute, which makes it poor value compared to the Riiing card mentioned above. Or am I missing something?

 

Richard

 

 

[BJSLIV]

I suppose that the downside of the Riiing card is that as it is based in Lichtenstein, presumably the SIM numbers are Lichtenstein too , so  anyone calling you from France incurs the cost of an international call.

In which case anyone trying for a quote from an artisan may face an even longer wait

Another possible downside is the somewhat convoluted system (callback) for actually making a call.

[irlandais]

If you're in Brittany, Basse-Normandy or Pays de la Loire, try Breizh Mobile (http://www.breizhmobile.com/) They are a virtual operator piggy backing on the Orange network so the coverage is good, but they much better value.  A €10 top up lasts 2 months which is far better than all the rest.  I use Breizh here in Nantes and it works very well.  You can get the sim card in The Phone House.

[Will]

Thanks for the explanation about Breizh, I saw a 'top up here' notice for that in a shop window and wondered what it was.

Buying mobile phones in France (as opposed to SIM cards) seems a really bad idea from our experience, for reasons of service as much as cost. We now use English phones which take our French Orange (pay monthly, not PAYG) SIM cards.

Having experienced the reverse problem, i.e. French roaming charges while in Britain, we bought a couple of very cheap phones on Virgin Mobile as that, though probably not the best or cheapest for UK, looked like a good option for visits to Britain and occasional use in France. Both of the phones, a Siemens and a Sendo, did actually take French Orange SIM cards without having to be unlocked.  But according to Virgin, if you have spent at least £30 on airtime, you can get any of their phones unlocked without charge.

[Ecossais]

If you live in France and make occasional visits to UK you should definitely consider buying either a UK PAYG SIM card or UK PAYG mobile to use when you’re in the UK.  That way you will not incur roaming charges as Will says, and your British friends will have a cheaper number to contact you on.  However remember anyone phoning you on it from France will be charged for a call to an international mobile.

 

SIM Cards are very cheap compared with France and a UK SIM will work in an unlocked French mobile.  You can get an O2 SIM for £5, Orange £8, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Virgin (includes £5 credit) for £10.  You can buy a mobile phone complete with SIM card from £25.

 

If you’re going to make most of your calls to a particular UK mobile network it will be best to buy a PAYG on that network as cross-network calls are usually more expensive.

 

Virgin is probably the cheapest network if most of your calls will be to landline numbers as they charge 15p per minute for the first 5 minutes in any day and then 5ppm thereafter.  With Virgin, if you have a UK bank account you can set up a direct debit to pay for the calls each month rather than buying ‘top-ups’.

 

There is no expiry on your credit with UK PAYG mobiles (apart from ‘3’ network).  You do however need to make a quick chargeable call every 3 / 6 months (depending on network) to keep your number active.  This can be made from France.

 

[Will]

Looking for something else altogether, I came across this UK SIM card deal which looks rather good, offering calls to France for 7p and savings on other international calls too, so it might be worth considering.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009F0SZS/026-3828874-2438061

It appears to come from Carphone Warehouse, though there's not a lot of information on their site.

[Rjpfrancais]

Re Mobile World Sim Card - much more info at http://www.freedom-mobiles.co.uk/cgi/frefer.cgi?refer=googleCPW&page=carphone-warehouse-mobile-world-international-sim-card.html

No good really for me as its a UK only SIM card.

 

[Cal50]

be careful buying a sim card to put in your uk phone:My own experience has been that a french sim doesn't work in a uk phone: helen

[Ecossais]

Cal 50,

 

There’s no reason for a French SIM not to work in a UK mobile, so long as it is “unlocked” / “SIM free”.  If the phone will accept any UK network SIM, it will work with any French network SIM.

 

UK Pay As You Go mobiles are “locked” to the network they are sold on, you can get most phones “unlocked” for around £10.

 

 

[Will]

I agree with Ecossais - our experience is that French cards will work in any unlocked phone. The SIM card is, basically, an international standard and although the French have a tendency to produce their own versions of international standards, with SIM cards they follow the rules.

Some phones are easy to unlock - unlock codes for most Nokias can be purchased cheaply through Ebay or similar, while phones on the Virgin network either come unlocked (they don't tell you this) or Virgin will give you the code for free as long as yu have spent £30 on air time. Other makes need to be unlocked by somebody with the right equipment, which typically costs £10-20 as Ecossais says. You can also buy SIM-free phones which will take any card, though because these are not subsidised by a network they can appear expensive to buy. But because you don't have to be tied to any network they can prove worthwhile, particularly if you travel a lot.

[Brilec]

Certainly, french sims will work in unlocked UK phones. One other point though, some phones will ask for a security number (5 digits, nokia default 12345) before accepting a new sim. Also, when you put a french sim in , the phone will probably display in french, which can add to this confusion. The language can be set in the phone settings menu. The default is automatic.

Another point. Mobile coverage in rural France is patchy. Before you buy a sim package, use your english phone in the location you want be in, and check which network is best. You can set the network selection manually in the phones menu again. Check each network available to see which gives you the strongest signal. Most UK phone networks have "partners" in France, thus Vodaphone will normally lock onto SFR unless this is not available. This does not mean that it has the strongest signal. I learned this the hard way.

The length of validity of topups does vary between networks in France, with SFR you have to pay 35€ to get 2 months, whereas with Bouygues telecom you only need 25€, and you get 2.5€ extra free. Call charges seem to be about the same though at around 50 cents per minute for calls to french landlines or any french mobile (not just your own network).

For those who live in France and want a UK sim for when they are visiting, you could do worse than the new Tesco value sim package, currently on offer at half price, so for £6.73 you get the sim plus £10 of calls. It can only be used in the UK and texts are 5p each, calls 15 p per minute to all UK landlines and ANY UK mobile. Details on www.tesco.com

 

Brian.

[Ecossais]

The Tesco Mobile SIM deal is a good offer and their flat rate 15ppm call charges very competitive.  Their charges for calls from the UK to France are very reasonable too – 20p per minute to a landline and 30ppm to a French mobile.

 

Note you can only top-up a Tesco mobile at a Tesco supermarket or online or by registering your credit card with them – you wont be able to buy a £10 top-up voucher in a high street newsagent etc as you can with the mainstream networks.

 

O2 Pay As You Go looks like the cheapest mobile network for calls to France (and other places) at the moment – only 7p per minute to a landline so long as you set up O2’s “International Caller Bolt On” which is free, for details see http://www.o2.co.uk/productsservices/boltons/international

 

[Brilec]

30 p per min to a french mobile? BT landline charge is 34 pence. A real bargain. It is possible, however, that they only charge by the minute.

 

Brian.

[Brilec]

Eccosais,

According to what I have just read on the Tesco website, calls to Zone 1 international are 20 pence per minute to fixed lines AND mobiles.

Also minimum call cost is 5p, then one second increments.

Brian.

[Ecossais]

Brian,

 

Apologies for the error, you are of course correct – Tesco Mobile is 20 ppm to landlines and mobiles – making a Tesco SIM really superb value for keeping in touch with friends on mobiles in France (and the other countries).

 

The 30p I mentioned is actually the cost from an O2 Pay As You Go to a French mobile.  So the best deals calling France from mobiles in the UK are:

 

To French landlines - from O2 PAYG 7p per minute when you subscribe free to International Caller Bolt On.

 

To French mobiles - from Tesco Mobile PAYG 20p per minute.

 

For more details:

 

http://www.o2.co.uk/productsservices/boltons/international

 

http://www.tescomobile.com/valuesim.aspx?pc=22&us=1&h=1

 

[Will]

I'm confused now - when I last went to England, about three weeks ago, I picked up a leaflet in the store about the Tesco Value SIM, but didn't think it was any good to me because I was sure the leaflet said it could only be used in UK. I took this to mean UK numbers only, is this correct, or can you use it to call international numbers from Britain, but can't use the SIM overseas? Tesco also does a standard SIM which offers full international use, but the roaming charges look rather high.

[Brilec]

If you follow the link for the mobile options on www.tesco.com you will see that the cost for calling the various international zones is given for the value SIM. Thus it CAN be used to call abroad from the UK (and very cheaply if it is a french mobile you want to call), what you cannot do with it is expect the card to work in France - it won't.

Brian.