3G internet on the go keys in France ?

  • Thread starter mountainsandheather
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mountainsandheather

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Hi all, going to France for 20 days in June. Just wondering if any of you have purchased the prepaid/not billed 3G keys to have your internet on the go ? Have had a look and it's all so confusing, they keep saying "no account/no commitment", and then it turns out they are indeed billpay keys.

I'm lucky enough I'm French so read a few French forums on the subject, and it seems Carrefour, Auchan, and other big supermarkets have their own prepaid keys too, but the posts I am reading are years old. Anyone has recent experience of these ?

Ideally what I would like is a key that you can top up as you go, as I have here in Ireland. You can actually top it up even online, as their "shop page" comes up to let you do that, even if you run out.
 
mountainsandheather said:
Hi all, going to France for 20 days in June. Just wondering if any of you have purchased the prepaid/not billed 3G keys to have your internet on the go ? Have had a look and it's all so confusing, they keep saying "no account/no commitment", and then it turns out they are indeed billpay keys.

I'm lucky enough I'm French so read a few French forums on the subject, and it seems Carrefour, Auchan, and other big supermarkets have their own prepaid keys too, but the posts I am reading are years old. Anyone has recent experience of these ?

Ideally what I would like is a key that you can top up as you go, as I have here in Ireland. You can actually top it up even online, as their "shop page" comes up to let you do that, even if you run out.
Click to expand...

Your correct the easiest way to have 3g in France is to buy a dongle / key from Carrefore or similar. Taking a UK dongle is expensive as you will pay roaming charges which can be v expensive.

Don't forget hotspots, McDonalds carparks are great for parking having a coffe and checking your emails :)
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I also found that Flunch also have free wifi, being French it should be easy for you to register & sign up for them. Also the tourist information usually offer some free wifi, if you can park close enough you can pick them up from your van :rolleyes:
 
Thanks both, I think I'll go for the Carrefour ones, I'm in Ireland BigGiraffe, and we have a brilliant top up 3g key, but I don't even think they offer the roaming service, would avoid it anyway.
Other than that I'll just have to drop hubby and kids at the play area in McDo's and have a surf with a latte and a cookie :D ... how bad ;)
 
mountainsandheather said:
Thanks both, I think I'll go for the Carrefour ones, I'm in Ireland BigGiraffe, and we have a brilliant top up 3g key, but I don't even think they offer the roaming service, would avoid it anyway.
Other than that I'll just have to drop hubby and kids at the play area in McDo's and have a surf with a latte and a cookie :D ... how bad ;)
Click to expand...

Went into the Carrefour Hypermarket in Herouville-St Clair and tried to buy a stick. As we didn't have a French bank account we coudn't buy one. Visa not accepted.

Tarif was 2 euro for first hour and 8 euro of the rest of the day. Not cheep I think.

We got a leaflet that gives charges as such as
15h (valable 30 jours) @ 39 euro or
20min(valable 24h) @ 3 euro

Vodafone charge £9.99 roaming charge per day.

Can anyone tell me in simple language what to ask for in a French store for a "pay as you go" stick and where to buy one without having to sign up for an account. Joan has limited french and I do not speak any. We are here for 2 months this trip.
 
Hi.

There doesn't seem to be any cheap way for pay as you go Internet in France. Talking to the salesman in Carrefour at the weekend, and he reckons that it'll be another couple of years before we see any improvement in prices. Even taking out a contract seems pricey. Orange fr seem to have the best formulas at the moment but that doesn't help tourists.
May I suggest you do as we do, we seem to come across enough free hotspots, with fast food outlets, office's de tourisme, mairie's are now making wifi available in some towns, libraries, marinas and even some tabacs, as in our village.
I generally find that by making enquiries at the office de tourisme if they could'nt help directly then they would point me in the right direction.
That said can any body help us? as we will be in a similar situation on our trip to the UK next month.
Regards Nolly.
 
WiFi

Hi

3G in France appears to be a no-go simply too expensive. I have a FON Spot router connected to my home broadband line, which shares my broadband via WiFi with others. For doing this, I get to use the broadband shared by others via their Fon Spots - including Fon Spots located abroad. The big French WiFi network 'Neuf' has recentely joined FON.

The standard Fon Spot has a pretty poor antenna meaning that to get a signal using the WiFi card built into most laptops, you would need to be right outside the property - a bit of a pain!

I have installed permanently a large WiFi antenna on the roof of the van (via a magnetic mount). I feed this into an Alfa 1Watt capable USB WiFi card.

This gets me a signal from much further away, and there are still a heck of alot of open wifi access points about the place. To keep it legal in Europe requires that the power is limited to 100mW.

In addition to the above, I also have a WiFi yagi aerial (looks like a TV aerial, but works at 2.4GHz). This is directional. If the signal via the magi-mount aerial is poor, then the Yagi sorts it out. All the kit came from ebay. I'll dig out some pics...

Having this kit available also means that one can use the access point at a tourist info centre, or macdonalds etc from much further away.

Nigel
 
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