Can someone recommend a provider in France?

[saildroid]

I'll be leaving for France next week and plan to buy a SIM card locally for my D2G. VZW gave me the unlock code and I have done this in Italy last month. There, I just bought a card at Rome airport on arrival and the guy in the store configured it for me.

Can someone recommend a provider in France? What slightly complicates this is that I actually fly to Belgium (Brussels) so picking up a card at the airport is probably not an option. My understanding is that they go by country.

Where would I go to buy a SIM card in France and, if possible, have them install it, too? (I am not exact a Droidology expert).

Thanks.

 

[al19]

I was in France with my D2G about a month ago for 10 days and used an Orange SIM. Very good service (I was just in Paris and vicinity though) and the people in the Orange store on Blvd St Michel were extremely nice and helpful. The SIM was about 10 euros. Just used it for phone and text. I had free wifi most places I was.

Have a safe and enjoyable trip.


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[Gasai Yuno]

I agree with al19, Orange would be your best bet.

 

[saildroid]

I was in France with my D2G about a month ago for 10 days and used an Orange SIM. Very good service (I was just in Paris and vicinity though) and the people in the Orange store on Blvd St Michel were extremely nice and helpful. The SIM was about 10 euros. Just used it for phone and text. I had free wifi most places I was.

Have a safe and enjoyable trip.


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OK, guys, here are my experiences: I am right now in France and, although I am typing this on my laptop and not on my D2G, this is only because I prefer a 'real' keyboard, the connectivity is certainly there.

So, this is how it went: upon arrival in France (in Rouen, one of the larger cities in Normandie), I asked the hotel reception where I could buy a SIM card. They directed me to a close-by shop by one of the major mobile phone providers, FSR. The shop was full of hip-looking salespeople that would have been happy to sell me a SIM card but when I asked for assistance to install it (meaning to configure it), I immediately drew a complete blank. They had absolutely no idea.

I then tried another provider, Buouygen (or some similar spelling) just down the road (if there is one thing the French have enough, it is cell phone outlets, the city centers are littered with them!). Exactly the same result. Then I tried an independent shop, who sold both FSR and Orange and Buouygen (sp?) and maybe others. Again, smart-looking kids but completely helpless when I asked to 'parametriser' the phone. I was close to giving up hope. Then there was an Orange shop. Same result, but they said they could 'perhaps' do it at a Customer Service center, in a shopping mall somewhere out of town.

OK, to make a long story short, they couldn't do it either but, after all that, I managed to get it configured myself (it was distressingly simple, just put the provider name to 'Orange 3D' and everything worked!!). There were some more issues that I will spare you (some misinformation by the Orange people who were on the whole nice and friendly but really not competent, to put it mildly) but the upshot is this:

You need a basic SIM card from Orange which costs Euro 9.99 or thereabouts and gives you basically nothing else (make sure you have your passport with you, they need to make a copy of it). Then you can buy a plan for Euro 9.- which is for a month and a maximum of 600GB total, after which it supposedly is slowed down. Make sure you ask for this plan, it took the sales person a while to find it.

After you buy this, it takes a day until it works (they sales said up to two but it worked after about 12 hours for me), and from then on it has been clear sailing for me! Coverage is very good, I have nearly everywhere access. It is data only (no voice minutes are included in this plan) and supposedly VOIP is disabled, I did not try it. I don't know how much of the 600MB I have used (I have not found an indicator or something) but it has been enough for email and web browsing (researching and booking hotels, reading NYT etc), plus some Google-mapping/navigating when the GPS that is built-in in the care could not find places. Every single hotel I have been in so far has free WIFI so I use cellular only on the road.

This is really all that I need and I am very pleased that I get all this for 19.- Euros.dancedroid Well, plus a few hours of fruitless talking to salespeople but you can spare yourself this part if you make use of my experiences.

Hope this helps.

 

[Gasai Yuno]

Get 3G Watchdog from the market, it does a pretty fine job of traffic accounting and is free.

I'm actually more impressed not by the fact that those people at stores couldn't help you, but that you actually needed help with that, since usually the carriers provide autoconfiguration services via SMS or their websites.

Basically, all you have to do is send an empty message to a service number and get a message in response which, when opened, offers to set up your phone's APN for the new carrier.

A lot of carriers automatically send such a message when you insert the SIM into a new phone that was not registered on their network before, or when the SIM card is first activated.

 

[saildroid]

Get 3G Watchdog from the market, it does a pretty fine job of traffic accounting and is free.

I'm actually more impressed not by the fact that those people at stores couldn't help you, but that you actually needed help with that, since usually the carriers provide autoconfiguration services via SMS or their websites.

Basically, all you have to do is send an empty message to a service number and get a message in response which, when opened, offers to set up your phone's APN for the new carrier.

A lot of carriers automatically send such a message when you insert the SIM into a new phone that was not registered on their network before, or when the SIM card is first activated.

You are right, I forgot about 3GWatchdog. I used to have it on Verizon before I switched to the unlimited plan (July 7) and then I got rid of it. I will reinstall it.

I did not know about this automatic message thing, sounds like a great idea. I don't think Orange did it.

Thanks a lot!

--Ernst

 

[cubuff]

I was in France with my D2G about a month ago for 10 days and used an Orange SIM. Very good service (I was just in Paris and vicinity though) and the people in the Orange store on Blvd St Michel were extremely nice and helpful. The SIM was about 10 euros. Just used it for phone and text. I had free wifi most places I was.

Have a safe and enjoyable trip.


Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using DroidForums

OK, guys, here are my experiences: I am right now in France and, although I am typing this on my laptop and not on my D2G, this is only because I prefer a 'real' keyboard, the connectivity is certainly there.

So, this is how it went: upon arrival in France (in Rouen, one of the larger cities in Normandie), I asked the hotel reception where I could buy a SIM card. They directed me to a close-by shop by one of the major mobile phone providers, FSR. The shop was full of hip-looking salespeople that would have been happy to sell me a SIM card but when I asked for assistance to install it (meaning to configure it), I immediately drew a complete blank. They had absolutely no idea.

I then tried another provider, Buouygen (or some similar spelling) just down the road (if there is one thing the French have enough, it is cell phone outlets, the city centers are littered with them!). Exactly the same result. Then I tried an independent shop, who sold both FSR and Orange and Buouygen (sp?) and maybe others. Again, smart-looking kids but completely helpless when I asked to 'parametriser' the phone. I was close to giving up hope. Then there was an Orange shop. Same result, but they said they could 'perhaps' do it at a Customer Service center, in a shopping mall somewhere out of town.

OK, to make a long story short, they couldn't do it either but, after all that, I managed to get it configured myself (it was distressingly simple, just put the provider name to 'Orange 3D' and everything worked!!). There were some more issues that I will spare you (some misinformation by the Orange people who were on the whole nice and friendly but really not competent, to put it mildly) but the upshot is this:

You need a basic SIM card from Orange which costs Euro 9.99 or thereabouts and gives you basically nothing else (make sure you have your passport with you, they need to make a copy of it). Then you can buy a plan for Euro 9.- which is for a month and a maximum of 600GB total, after which it supposedly is slowed down. Make sure you ask for this plan, it took the sales person a while to find it.

After you buy this, it takes a day until it works (they sales said up to two but it worked after about 12 hours for me), and from then on it has been clear sailing for me! Coverage is very good, I have nearly everywhere access. It is data only (no voice minutes are included in this plan) and supposedly VOIP is disabled, I did not try it. I don't know how much of the 600MB I have used (I have not found an indicator or something) but it has been enough for email and web browsing (researching and booking hotels, reading NYT etc), plus some Google-mapping/navigating when the GPS that is built-in in the care could not find places. Every single hotel I have been in so far has free WIFI so I use cellular only on the road.

This is really all that I need and I am very pleased that I get all this for 19.- Euros.dancedroid Well, plus a few hours of fruitless talking to salespeople but you can spare yourself this part if you make use of my experiences.

Hope this helps.

Do you remember what the name of the plan was called? Dolphin, or monkey..ect. I was looking at buying my sim from orange in advance and having it shipped to me so I can make sure that my unlock codes verizon gave me are working with the new sim.

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[saildroid]

I don't remember the name of the plan but I don't think it was some animal. I think something generic.

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