| How to check if your phone works in France, and find the best solution. |
First,
you need to find out if your current phone works internationally. If
your phone has the 900 and the 1800 MHz networks, it will work in
France with your current carrier. Many of AT&T’s and T-mobile
phones do have these extra networks for international use. Handsets
provided by other carriers such as Verizon and Sprint on the other
hand, with a few exceptions, do not have the correct networks. To
find out if your phone works internationally, either consult the
handbook or ask your provider’s customer service representative. It is
recommended that you confirm for yourself that indeed your phone does
have international capabilities as many customer service reps are
not as informed as they should be on international roaming.
► My cell phone will work in France........ If
you confirm that your phone will work in France, you have two options –
you can either use your phone with your current provider and pay their
rates or you can use your phone with another provider, a French
provider, and pay significantly lower rates.
If you opt for using your US or Canadian provider’s service, you can expect to pay about $1.00-$1.25 per minute (plus
tax) for all calls in and out. This makes sense if you truly will not
do not intend to use your phone during your trip or if those rates are
acceptable to you. If you plan to use your phone to book restaurants,
call friends, call back home or receive calls and you want to save as
much as possible, it makes sense to purchase a SIM card for France (the
SIM card is the chip that goes in the phone, giving you service).
There are several telecom providers in France offering
cellular service on a prepaid system. SIM cards can be bought either
beforehand from a provider selling them in the US, or obtained once in
France. Purchasing one before your trip makes sense because you
will have the number before you go and the service in hand when you
land.
Compared
to the rates of using a US or Canadian provider, rates are
considerably less expensive – especially if you can take advantage
of free incoming calls. Where’s the catch? There really is no catch but, there is
a caveat. Obviously, if you are not using AT&T or Verizon, et al
for the service, they do not see a penny. They would much rather you
use their service while you are in France rather than have you use a
French SIM card. Therefore, their phones come “locked” into their
network. That means that if you swap out their SIM card with another
SIM card, in this case a France SIM card, the phone will not
automatically accept the SIM card.
The good news is that your provider can and will unlock the phone if you ask them to do so. When
you purchase a France SIM card, you essentially become a customer of
the French telecom company on a pay as you go basis. Therefore, you do
not need to sign a contract or fulfill month obligations. You simply
put the SIM card in your phone and add talk time when you need it. When
you’re done with the SIM card you can either discard it or use it again
if and when you return to France. Adding talk time is simple. You can
go to any café or supermarket and ask for a “carte recharge” or
recharge voucher. They come in denominations from 5 Euros up. Simply
enter the pin number from the voucher onto your handset and, voilà, you
have added additional call credit.
► My Cell Phone will not work in France
If your cell phone does not work in France you can still use the same service but you will need to rent or buy a phone.
If
your trip is only a week or two and you do not travel overseas at least
once a year, it makes sense to rent the phone and get a France SIM
card. If you are a frequent traveler overseas, whether it be to France
or other destinations, it makes more sense to buy the phone as a quad
band GSM phone works in 200 countries with the appropriate SIM card. In
fact, you can even use it in the US or Canada. Some people use it as a
back up or emergency phone or if you have visitors from overseas, you
can let them borrow that handset and have them buy a local pay as you
go solution.
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