Denise_McMahon

Having received some confusing/conflicting answers to a question I have asked friends (not on Fodors) I am hoping I'm in the correct spot now to find out.

I am travelling to France from Australia with an English Sim card. The confusion is in the prefix #s to use

1. How do I ring a FRENCH mobile # with an English Sim while in France.
2. How do I ring an ENGLISH mobile # with an English Sim while in France.

Let's say the number I want to ring is a mobile +3362 294 etc.
Thanks
Denise

hetismij2

The easiest is of course to just use the full international phone number, however my experience, using a Dutch SIM when travelling in Europe is that you do not need the country code when calling within that country - so if I am in France I can just call the number without the country code (but with a 0 at the start!). To call another country you do need the country code - so to call the UK you call +44 then the number minus the first zero.

However as I said the easiest is to pre-program the phone with numbers including the country code if you can. All my Dutch numbers are in my mobile with +31 at the start.

Be aware of roaming charges in France!

Alec

Roaming charges are capped so you only pay 18.8p a min calling out and 4.9p/min receiving. Texting within EU is 5.9p each. Find out how to top up your credit. You can usually do it online using credit/debit card.

Sarastro

To call a French number from within France, there are two options:

1, dial the 10 digit number including the leading 0.
2. Beginning with the plus (+) sign, dial the country code, omit the leading 0 and continue with the remaining 9 numbers.

To call any foreign number from within France, use one of these two methods:

1. Plus (+) sign, country code, local exchange (omitting leading zeros as applicable).
2. dial 001, country code, local exchange (omitting leading zeros as applicable).

greg

For the purpose of dialing OUT, ALL cellphones using ANY SIM from ANY country behaves like a local phone. In this case, like French phones the locals are carrying in their pockets.

That is why the above responses tells you, if you are in France to use

1. 10 digits starting with 0, usually annotated as (0) to France (or precisely someone having a French SIM or a French landline).
2. and +44 plus the rest minus leading (0) to UK (again precisely to someone having a UK SIM or a UK landline)

The "(0)" notation is used to indicate, keep the first "0" if calling within the same country, while drop the first "0" if calling from outside the country.

Programming "+country" into your phone directory would be the easiest. However, this notation did not work correctly with my older telephones.

bilboburgler

But your phone thinks it has an English sim, so it thinks its base is UK. So when in France phoning France is phoning a foreign number while phoning England is a home country number.

Alec

<I>But your phone thinks it has an English sim, so it thinks its base is UK. So when in France phoning France is phoning a foreign number while phoning England is a home country number.</I>

No. What happens is when your phone is roaming in France, it will be allotted a temporary local (French) number (Mobile Subscriber Roaming Number) by the network you are roaming on to act as ID, but it remains hidden from you. So to call a French number (landline or mobile), you can just dial like on any French phone. To call a UK number, you normally dial the full international prefix 00 44 and then UK number omitting the first 0. Sometimes you can dial just the UK number. The French networks knows it's a UK SIM with temporary French number, and will connect the call appropriately.

Sarastro

Alec is correct, your UK SIM will act as any French phone when you are in France.

I should like to correct my post above in its reference to dialing long distance from within France. I incorrectly indicated that one dials 001 for a long distance call. That is only true if the call is to North America. Alec has correctly noted that only 00 is dialed before the country code.

bilboburgler

Thanks Alec, never understood it until you explained it.