wco81

Anyone try out Free?

Prices and amount of data are unmatched.

Free mobile : forfaits mobiles 4G+ sans engagement

Mainly online but there are a number of Free Centers and also places with these Bornes or vending machines.

der_saeufer

Free is a great deal. Technically only available to residents of France, but realistically anyone with a credit card can sign up at the kiosk. You need a French address but they don't mail anything so I'm sure I'm not the only customer of theirs who lives at 55, ‎Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The roaming is great, particularly outside the EU--I've used it in Ukraine, Turkey and the U.S. and been very satisfied.

One downside is that it's not really prepaid. When you buy your SIM, you can choose a single month or a month-to-month subscription. In true French fashion, the only way to cancel the subscription is by registered letter, which is inconvenient for a 2-3 month trip, though there are websites that will send the letter for you for a fee.

wco81

My understanding is that they'd only deduct credit if you leave the credit on the account?

So you go to the vending machines and would buy like their 8.99 Euro plan plus pay 10 Euro for plan and presumably pay 19 Euro with your credit card right then and there.

Then if you don't have any credit, what would they deduct?

My question though is about registration and activation. I thought France required registering, meaning they typically want to copy your passport.

The other thing is coverage and speeds. Sounds like they have the big cities covered but curious about smaller towns or villages and also for Corsica.

der_saeufer

There is no 'credit on the account', it's a subscription with monthly bills and everything. You're signing up for a contract either of indeterminate length (no minimum) or for one month. Every month you get a bill for this month's plan plus last month's out-of-plan usage, if any, and they charge your credit card automatically.

I don't know the legal intricacies of France's ID requirements, but given that you can buy your SIM and sign up with nothing more than a credit card that's evidently sufficient.

Coverage is good by American standards but not as good as the bigger French networks. I've never had any issues in rural areas, but I'm mostly in northern France so I can't speak for other parts of the country. When roaming, you generally have access to at least two networks though the phone will prefer one per country. (exception: in the US, you have only AT&T)

ETA link to roaming countries: http://mobile.free.fr/fiche-forfait-free.html (scroll down to see map and names of countries)

lsquare

LOL! The person behind the kiosk couldn't figure it out that it was fake?

der_saeufer

There's no person, it's a touchscreen device.

And that address isn't fake. I just don't live there

bukzin

What is meant by ‘ETA’ ?

ajGoes

"Edited to add". Maybe the OP will ETA that post and expand the TLA ("three-letter acronym"). :-)

bukzin

Looks like this Free service also has some very handy features

Wish more of the US carriers did as well.



Free mobile - Services mobiles

lsquare

Haha! What I meant to say was I was surprised they couldn't figure out that you didn't lived in such a famous address.

exp

Has anyone used the Orange Holiday in recent years?

Already activated so you don't have to wait for someone at an Orange store to activate your SIM, which involves them probably looking and copying your passport, since photo ID is now required.

So you can buy one at Amazon and probably eBay. Costs about $50 for the one with 20 GB of data. Only downside is it's only valid for 14 days, which may not be enough to use all that data.

However, if you want to hit the ground running, this may be a good choice and you can also use it all over Europe as well as Switzerland, Norway and the UK (even after Brexit?).

https://boutique.orange.fr/mobile/ca...ge-holiday-eng


The other question I had was about topping up online, though it sounds like it would be easy to get Orange vouchers just about anywhere.

They have this site which supposedly will take foreign credit cards:

https://topup.orange.com

Do they have surcharges, especially for using a foreign card?

If you top up an Orange Holiday SIM, does it automatically renew that offer, 20 GB for €40 valid for another 14 days?

chica

I can only answer your first question. We bought 3 orange holiday cards just before the Pandemic. So I was curious if they work for our recent trip to France, over Thanksgiving 2021.
My SIM card worked fine, my husband’s did not. I wanted to go to an Orange Store to find out why, but he did not want to do so. He just used Verizon $10, a day plan.
I did register my SIM card, and plan to top up for my planned trip in March.

guy999

what network has the most 5g? I have new iphone and figured I might as well use 5g, from web search it appears to be free mobile but apparently all of their site is in french without translation and as long as i have internet i can translate but that could be a problem if i can't get the card to work..

der_saeufer

Free claims to have France's largest 5G network; realistically it probably doesn't matter much unless you're going to be using ridiculous amounts of data because the LTE coverage on all French networks is plenty fast.

The service is technically only available to residents of France, though they make zero effort to enforce it as long as you're not costing them money. But I wouldn't expect any help in English, and you'll need to speak at least 3rd grade French to cancel by registered letter, since Free offers only no-contract postpaid service, not prepaid.

I think you can still sign up for one month only at a kiosk, but if you need more than a month or want to get an eSIM online you have to sign up for a regular subscription and cancel when you're done.

guy999

last time i was in london, i saved money by getting 3g, this was before 5g came out, and it was very slow.