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Quote:

Originally Posted by iff (Post 19751388)

Sosh is contract only, so unless you have a French bank account and sign up for a monthly contract, that won't be an option. Same thing for B&You's plans with the exception of their new prepaid card offer at 4.99€ for the SIM including 15 minutes, with recharges available in varying amounts. The downside with that is there's not much data offered, the SIM will be mailed to a French address, and I'm not sure whether a foreign credit card can be used for the online purchase.

This is now two different threads on two different forums where iff has stepped in with the right data. Merci beaucoup. ^

If anyone has any doubts that you will not be able to use Sosh, here is what they require to open an account:

Les informations dont vous aurez besoin lors de votre commande :

- Un justificatif d’identité en cours de validité

- Un relevé d’identité bancaire

- Une carte bancaire s’il s’agit de votre mode de paiement

- Un n° de téléphone valide pour pouvoir vous joindre en cas de besoin

- Une adresse mail qui nous permettra entre autres de vous parvenir le mail de confirmation de commande.

Putting this through Google Translate will not give you a clue of how much red tape this really is. The second item, for example, in reality means "proof of a French bank account for debit purposes." In other words, your Citibank ATM card will not do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iff (Post 19751388)

I just bought the prepaid B&You SIM for my just-in-case personal phone (my main mobile is my office Orange). I can't remember what credit card I used to pay for the SIM carte itself but definitely to recharge it, I had to use my French card as my S'pore card would not be accepted (whether by phone or through one's bandyou online account). Nice thing for frequent visitors and foreign residents in France is that B&You prepaid does not have a validity period (maybe 1 recharge a year or something).

Essentially all the low cost: Sosh, Red, BandYou and Free are still contracts but much cheaper. So they come with all the registration hassles of the full service jobs.
But the French prepaids (my experience thus far are with Bouygues and Orange for phones, SFR for ipad prepaid data) are quite painless. US prepaids on the other hand are proving to be a real ........

Quote:

Originally Posted by dannybhoy (Post 19759145)

How much and how much data are the prepaids?

Can they be used for tethering or will they not work in Mifis?

Useful information on pay as you go 3G in France here - http://oneeyeddog.wordpress.com/2011...arte-payg-sim/

Mostly Orange France but some info on SFR too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wco81 (Post 19760103)

How much and how much data are the prepaids?

Can they be used for tethering or will they not work in Mifis?

Bouygues BandYou prepaid has various recharges of 10€ to 60€. You will need to charge your B&you prepaid upon purchase since it only has 15mins of talk time which does not appear to be useable for normal calls. In terms of data, I believe it is 20mb per € or 0.10€ per minute of call or 0.05€ per SMS. B&you works for me bcos I can decide how much of my credit to spend on data or calls or text. Have not used the data yet so don't know what the speed is.

I don't think orange mobicarte prepaid has data. At least I've never used it with data.

SFR ipad prepaid data is 30€ for 2Gb valid for 30 days. 9€ for 500mb for 7 days. Can't remember how much the data sim costs tho but i think it has 1 or 2 days of unlimited data?

Don't know about tethering.

SFR may be the way to go, if you can split it among several devices. But since it's for the iPad, it may be micro or nano SIM.

This has some interesting info.

http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/France