My husband and I would like to stay in touch with each other while in Paris. We have two cells which we can most likely have unlocked but after purchasing SIM cards for them, how does one go about getting a service provider with a local Paris phone number? From what I've seen so far most companies want you to either rent or buy a phone and SIM card and they will then provide a plan. I don't want to have a number which is routed through the States or Canada and back to Paris. Any help will be much appreciated!

I've never had to buy a plan or sign a contract when I've used an unlocked phone with a SIM card. Once you pop the SIM card in, you're automatically connected to Orange or some other French network. Just get the SIM cards once you arrive.

Inserting the sim card in an unlocked gsm phone with the proper European frequencies is buying a plan....but there are other considerations...

1. Will you and your hubby be making lots of calls or is it the sort of thing meet me on the Champs Elysee at 1930....you might do much better using your home (assuming it's gsm and allows international roaming) carrier...text messages are relatively cheap...the occasional call will cost both of you in the vicinity of $.99 to $1.29 per minute (one to make and the other to receive so the cheapest calls between you will be $2 each time)...French mobile rates are expensive, unofortunately, in the vicinity of $40 per sim package with very limited included time (you can top up) and although I am a proponent of cell phones, the decision you have to make is just how much you will be using them.

Also will you be expecting people to call you in France? You might wish to look into www.callineurope.com but be careful of the fine print, it's not as cheap as it looks.

Also do you go to France each year? Do you travel to Europe each year? All of these questions may change your decision.

We used www.callineurope.com for a recent Paris trip. We purchased two SIM cards for our unlocked GSM phones (a BB Pearl and a Motorola RAZR) and they worked flawlessly. I also used the BB service to have my emails forwarded, and we used the call forwarding service by which folks at home called our usual US number and were automatically forwarded to us. The downside to this s that these forwarded incoming calls were charged per minute, while incoming calls directly dialed to the French number were free. You do have your French phone number in advance, so you you can give to people who might need to reach you, but we had some things going on that made it worthwhile for us.
I did a comparison and for us it was about 30-50% less then we would have paid had we used the AT&T international roaming plan (even the discount plan) as we have in the past.
As xyz correctly notes, if you will make just a few calls it may not be worth it, but we were quite pleased.

I've been telling people with other posts relating to this to check out www.voyportmobile.com because I'll be purchasing a SIM through them for my trip to the UK next month. They give you a number (local to your home area) that you can forward your calls to. Also, they give you an International Mobile Number for your trip. This number, in your case, would be a local Paris number. It makes it very easy, and cheap for you and your husband to call each other while in Paris.

I probably don't explain it too clearly, but the website should be able to answer your questions.