Calling English Mobiles

[MisterC]

Hi all

we are just about to move over to France permanently and we will probably go for the Orange internet+Tv+phone package which includes free phone calls to Uk landlines. However our kids all have mobiles rather than landlines - is there a some system out there which makes phoning UK mobiles from France bearable financially? 

[Chancer]

A €29.99 per month abonnement with Free.fr will get you television, internet, free land line calls to most countries and it will cost you 10cts per minute to call mobiles in the UK.

[MisterC]

Thanks Chancer - sounds brill - will now go on to check it out.

[MisterC]

Went to the Free.fr site which seems to say that I am something called non-dégroupée in my area - translation means unbundled but that is clear as mud - help anyone?

[NormanH]

Previously covered on this thread:

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/1966468/ShowPost.aspx

A ‘zone dégroupée’

(literally a de-grouped zone, but effectively 'privatised ') is not

under the monopoly of France

Telecom. Any Telecom company can have access to the lines and sell

services

like telephone, ADSL…

[AnOther]

To expand slightly on Normans reply;

Just as in UK and with BT the so called 'last mile' copper wire from the exchange to your property belongs to FT and always will. In a degroupee area 3rd party ISP's will have installed their own equipment in the local exchange and therefore are able to take complete control of the 'last mile' and consequently provide a range of services which might not otherwise be possible. With this system if any line faults occur it is the ISP who has to liase with FT to have them repaired, FT will not even talk to you as you are no longer a customer.

If you are non-degroupee and choose to go with another ISP other than Orange then on top of whatever any ISP offers you you may still have to pay the €16/mth line rental to FT although some ISP's do have their own options on this. Not sure what Free offer in this regard.

If you go with Orange you will have the option to not pay the rental but it will mean that in the event of a power cut or modem failure you would not have a phone line.

Hope this clarifies things a little.

[Les]

You could use someone like TELERABAIS to phone a UK mobile.

[Danny]

[quote user="AnOther"]To expand slightly on Normans reply;

Just as in UK and with BT the so called 'last mile' copper wire from the exchange to your property belongs to FT and always will. In a degroupee area 3rd party ISP's will have installed their own equipment in the local exchange and therefore are able to take complete control of the 'last mile' and consequently provide a range of services which might not otherwise be possible. With this system if any line faults occur it is the ISP who has to liase with FT to have them repaired, FT will not even talk to you as you are no longer a customer.

If you are non-degroupee and choose to go with another ISP other than Orange then on top of whatever any ISP offers you you may still have to pay the €16/mth line rental to FT although some ISP's do have their own options on this. Not sure what Free offer in this regard.

If you go with Orange you will have the option to not pay the rental but it will mean that in the event of a power cut or modem failure you would not have a phone line.

Hope this clarifies things a little.

[/quote]
and to expand even more slightly on An0's reply,

Free and SFR and Bouygues and Darty all also offer the choice of not keeping or keeping the FT line rental for most lines in a zone non degroupée. The only exceptions will be those lines that only capable of the very slowest ADSL service.

Danny

[MisterC]

Thanks everyone for that help - still a mine field of choice out there and will follow up as best I am able!

Cheers