Data plan while traveling in Paris
 

Hello everyone, thank you very much for your comments regarding my taxi ride from my previous post this afternoon. I think I will in fact take a taxi from the queue at Charles de Gaulle airport and call for a taxi from my hotel when needed.
I have just been talking to a work associate who has been to Paris recently and she has told me that she was able to buy A sim card that she was able to use with her unlocked cellular phone.
This Sim card included all services such as voice, text, and data of about 20 GB for roughly €20. She said the most popular cell phone provider in Paris is orange.
I do have an unlocked iPhone and I'm now Considering using it in order to get data in Paris as opposed to calling my local service provider to add a travel pack.
Can anyone confirm that a Sim card with data plan can be purchased by a foreigner. My work associate did say that the store did ask for a copy of her passport which they photocopied. I'm not sure if this is a safe thing to do.
Any thoughts? Thank you very much.

You always have to turn over your passport briefly and register your SIM card/phone with the provider, usually within 2 weeks of purchase. Nothing at all unusual about that.

Orange is certainly a reliable provider, but an expensive one. I have two French SIMs, a Lebara, which you can order for free, with a small number of minutes on it, ahead of time (it arrived here in the States about 5 days after I ordered it, but you can also buy one in France easily enough, and an SFR. Since Lebara-Lebara and SFR-SFR calls are free, I use whichever one the person I'm calling has (my phone is dual-SIM). I can also pop and Italian or American or whatever SIM in the second slot if need be.

You can check out Lebara at www.lebara.fr

I recently ordered the Lebara SIM based on recommendations on this and other forums.

It actually took two tries, the first time I messed up the fields, and it never showed up, the second time I got it right and got it in 5 days. (what worked was to put city and state in the "state" box, and USA in the "city" box).

Once I got it, activation was pretty painless. However, I've had some trouble topping it up. It accepted my payment, but the change wasn't reflected on the website, and while it shows the 100 bonus MB from my 20€ top-up, the credits aren't showing yet.

I've been in touch with their support about that issue, and also asked if they need a copy of my passport.