France--mobile phone options
 

For the seven days we will be visiting France, Verizon says they can loan me a global phone. The charges would be 17 cents per day and 99 cents per minute. Can I get a better deal if I rent a mobile phone from vendors once I am in France?

A friend of mine used that Verizon service last year and was happy with the service, its convenience and basic cost, but she lost a prescription and had to spend a lot of time on the phone to arrange for a replacement, so the bill mounted up. If you only intend to you use the phone in an emergency or for a few quick calls to confirm hotel or restaurant reservations, it is a reasonable cost. Long chats with loved ones back home would cost a small fortune.

See the thread a bit below on Call in Europe....the verizon solution will work if it is just for emergencies but those 99¢/minute (and remember it is rounded up to the next highest minute so a 61 second call costs you for 2 minutes) can quickly add up to real money. If you are absolutely sure you want to have a mobile phone and use it a bit, there are better solutions.

1. CIE as described in that thread.

2. Going into a French mobile phone store and buying a cheap gsm phone along with a French sim card (French PAYG plans are among the most expensive in the world but still probably cheaper than what you might spend on the verizon solution)....the cheap phone they give you will probably be locked and French sim cards have very limited life expectancies.

3. Use the ekit solution I described on that thread. It will require an unlocked gsm phone with at least the two European frequencies, readilly available on ebay as well as the sim card. I've given a link there to get a very reasonable sim card which will give you a USA phone number to give to your friends and allow you to receive calls while in France for 19¢/minute and make calls back to the USA for 49¢/minute a far better deal than the verizon one if you are going to be using the phone a tad more than just for the odd emergency call!

Thanks for the helpful replies.

I have used the Verizon phone several years ago on business and it worked fine, but the cost was high (granted I was on business and had a lot of calls both ways)

I have a phone now that does provide service in France. It's not cheap, but considering that the total cost of my "emergency" type calls for my last two trips has been $10 or so.... I haven't felt the need to do anything else. If like the poster above I was suddenly in a situation where I was going to be on the phone for long periods I think my plan is to go down to the local cell phone shops and see what I can pick up! :)