I spend several months in France each summer and need daily internet access to monitor my business.

Internet max did the job this summer but now its gone, for next year I've been looking at the french data bundles from the UK simcard company 0044 at around £60/month. The main drawbacks seem to be

1) the need to purchase their Orange F dongle for around £100. However there seems to an option on their website to purchase a data bundle on its own. Presumably this could be used with an unlocked dongle with the appropriate APN settings????

2) per month means the 1st to last day of each month - this wouldn't be a problem for a long term user like me but not much good for someone going ,say, from last week July to first week August.

Anyone got any experience or thoughts on this?

1  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you find this valuable? Do you?    

hey guys, me again. Final entry as I am now in Spain.
Weirdest thing, I tried again this morning and everything works now for free. Fring, Mobiweather, Teethring with laptop. Its really weird. If I were you, I would not top up too much and check on my balance regularly.Orange has been spotty in some areas and, as mentioned previouisly, sometimes, your credit just vanishes. Just a heads up.

 out of  found this valuable. Do you find this valuable?    

hello guys, In Cahors France and I will tell you my complete experience with the prepaid Mobicarte from Orange.
Arrived in Lyon on October 4 and immediately went to the Orange shop and purchased a sim card for 15 euro. I also purchased 25 euro worth of credit (you get an extra 10 euro if you buy 25).
First up, the unlimited internet option thing is now not available. What is available are the following. Internet Day for 3 euro which starts from 2am up to 23:59PM, Internet weekends for 5 euro which starts at midnight on fridays and ends midnight Monday. Finally, there is INTERNET MAX which is unlimited internet at NIGHTS from 8PM to 8AM the next day. I believe this is 6 or 9 euros and I think it is valid for three weeks. I am not sure about this, though. You get to choose these options by the #123# method explained above.
Ok, anyway, aside from web surfing a day, I use FRING constantly. ITS on all the time. What I would do is choose the daily INTERNET option for 3 euros a day. Since I was going to stay in france for more than a month, I went on and loaded a 75 euro mobicarte so that I could get 25 euro extra. Seems like a good deal. Everything was working perfectly with Fring, Phone browsing, and even plugging the SIM directly to the computer.
Until today.
Its October 24 and, this afternoon, to my shock, I noticed that I had zero credits left. So, I went to the Orange strore in Cahors and tried to find out what was going on. Long story short, as of today, they started charging me for FRING use. I guess they got smart to the whole VOIP or chat 24/7 idea so now, when I use fring, I get charged a ridiculously high amoung ( 1 euro per minute). Now, the funny thing is that if I use the phone to just surf ( opera browser ), I do not get charged at all. Its only when you use FRING that they get you.
Anybody know a way around this?

 out of  found this valuable. Do you find this valuable?    

As of now (Oct. 09) the "old" option internet max is no longer available.

It has been replace by "BP Journee internet Max" (3 €) and "BP week end Internet Max" (5 €) i.e. a flat rate for a day or the week end (saturday/sunday, I presume), between 2 am and 11:59 pm. I didn't find any information about volume or bandwidth limits. POP and SMTP are still off limits.

The menu structure and the numbers you have to send have been changed slightly, but the path remains the same:
Menu - Vos bon plans - Votre Multimedia - BP Journee Internet max

The SIM card itself (from an Orange shop) was cheaper than mentioned in a previous posts. Is it true that it will be deactivated if not recharged for 6 months?

 out of  found this valuable. Do you find this valuable?    

A big thanks to the original poster for this .
I need internet access for my business so I took various wi-fi hotspot adapters,antennas etc to France none of which got me connected except a new O2 dongle (which was half price, already unlocked and extremely easy to configure using the settings above) and an Orange mobicarte from ebay France purchased before I left .
Activated internet max on arrival in S France on 14/8/09. Couldn't seem to get past the #123# on screen menu so topped up and activated using the freephone numbers after repeatedly listening to the menus and advancing one step at a time..(Don't know why the previous poster had problems - Orange F website currently shows internet max option is still available.)
Have used about 400 mb through a dongle but I intend to keep it below 500mb to avoid any problems.
Will top-up on 13/9/09 and hopefully access will continue beyond 14/9/09.
Have NOT used e-mail as limit is very low and exceeding it will rapidly consume remaining credit. Used web mail instead.
Very occasionally have not been able to connect and instead get garbled screen message part of which says "you have insufficent credit" (In French) but this is easily resolved by disconnecting and re-connecting .

 out of  found this valuable. Do you find this valuable?    

Show Last Reply

Can i use this prepaid card/internet with a dongle/stick (laptop) instead of using it in my telephone?

0  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you find this valuable? Do you?    

Show Last Reply

the only solution in france is that: 1. Option 'Internet Max' ?
cuz point 2 is not enough for 3 weeks. 5MB whats that? nothing. with hsdpa i got in germany w/o problems 300kb/s download speed. haha. is the france mobile internet a joke?

no other solution?

1  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you find this valuable? Do you?    

Going to Nice for march 2009, where do I buy this card for my computer

1  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you find this valuable? Do you?    

Show Last Reply

I am going to be traveling in France for 2 months and I need wireless Internet access. Does anyone know of a telecom provider who sells wireless USB "cards" that would work with an Apple ibook. Or can you think of another solution. I guess I could get an unlocked phone and use a SIM card with a data plan, but since I live in the U.S., I am afraid that even a Nokia phone bought in the U.S. may use different data protocols for data.
Thanks!

 out of  found this valuable. Do you find this valuable?    

The 500MB limit mentioned in the terms isn't used at the moment. It had 2GB traffic and wasn't disconnected within the 2 weeks I was in France.

1  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you find this valuable? Do you?