Hi there,

I'm going to France for my year abroad soon and I was wondering what might be the best thing to do about getting a mobile out there. I have skype for chatting to people back home, but if you want to text a lot or just need to call someone at home while you're out, is it best to use your english mobile or to buy one out there and use that? It's just that I can't see any way around it being very expensive either way. And how would you go about getting a mobile? The French equivalent of a carphone warehouse?

Thanks!

Matt

Keep your UK mobile phone but do not use it in France except to listen you your answer phone. Unless of course you turn your UK answer phone off and leave a message giving advice about what your caller should do.

Buy a French SIM card payg and install. Use only for local French Calls (Why payg? You do not need a French bank account. If you have a French bank account consider a cheap student contract. You will need an account if you have an internet connection. Use France Telecom not Alice.)

For your friends to contact you cheaply buy a SkypeIn UK number and have it redirected to a French landline - you will probably need a landline for your computer connection. In a hall of residence with WiFi provided I would suggest you redirect to or they use your Skype address. Add Pamela to Skype to give you an on line answer machine. Or pay for it to be redirected to your French mobile - about 0.2 Euros per min. Or do both and be ruthless about call screening on your mobile which will make it go to Pamela for you to answer later. Skype allows you to redirect simultaneously to more than one phone.

Use SkypeOut to ring UK land lines for free with a subscription or pay at the rate above to ring their mobiles.

Become an addict to www.saynoto0870.com for finding geographical numbers to ring rather than expensive ones.

We are retired old folk who wander Europe to the great confusion of our family and friends. This structure is the cheapest and easiest for them to keep in touch.

Good luck

You could use addacumen@gmail.com to contact me

Tony Davis

I agree with Tony's advice. I took my UK mobile with me but left it turned off most of the time, and i bought a french pay as you go phone for about €20-30 to use when i was there. for getting in touch with people outside France, I used skype or just email, because it was free.

Pay as you go wasn't too expensive in France, I found myself spending about €20 per month, depending on usage.

Hope that helps!
Nick

That's brilliant advice - thank you both very much!

Matt

If you want to use your mobile to call or text people back in the UK then I'd suggest getting an "international" simcard as well as the French one. There are plenty of sites which sell them. I've got one called "truphone" from phones4U but there are many others. Either buy a cheap phone to put the international simcard in or just alternate between the French and international sim.

Hope this helps.

Have you compared the cost of this approach to the others? My experience is that

1. It was less expensive than using a UK mobile but more expensive than the approaches outlined above.
2. A real pain to use compared to the other approaches.

But maybe the more recent versions are better.

Tony D