Orange Sim Coverage
 

I have an orange sim card in my phone that I have had for years as we are in France many months of the year. I will be in Italy and need a phone while there. Will my orange sim card work in Italy? If not what would be my choices as I need to make a call upon arrival to the Leasing Car company.

Yes.

Yes but... I had to have Orange activate the International access for my Sim card. It was free, and so I don't know why it wouldn't have come with that, but it didn't.

So if you haven't used it internationally I'm not certain.

My Orange phone works anywhere in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia... and I have just a 1h a month subscription at 15€ a month. It has always worked automatically.

When you get to Italy your Orange will send you several texts telling you the cost of calls where you are. There's no reason the SIM card won't work there IF it still works in France, i.e. has credit in the account. (I assume you aren't paying monthly but buying Mobicarte minutes to lkep the number active.)

true. i've been buying minutes and keeping the same number as it is on my bus card. Great. thanks for the advice. I have an ipad 2 now and a friend just went to the orange store and put in a sim for internet and so if I do that, I should be able to use skype in italy while i'm there.

Your Orange/Mobicarte phone should work just fine in Italy (mine does) but beware -- if your plan is the same as mine, you can call anywhere in Italy with it, and you can call France, but you can NOT call a third country (US, Germany) from Italy with Orange. I understand that is true for all European countries – call within that country, or call France, but nowhere else.

BTW, I have a TIM card for Italy and that restriction does not exist. I have used the TIM account to call the US from Croatia and Spain, for example. It's expensive, but it works. I also like that TIM gives you one year of phone number longevity for any recharge, unlike Orange, which is stingy (IMO) with extending the life of your phone number.

Geoney....I'm not questioning you but wouldn't the card work for all calls within the eu? I know the French sim cards are more restrictive than those of other countries (they steal your credit after periods as short as one month, it's spelled out in their tariffs that when you top up a French sim, you top it up at the same time for both minutes and time) so it wouldn't shock me if they restricted cards the way you state but the whole thrust of the eu has been to make the eu on big happy non roaming zone and the charge for receiving calls has dropped, I believe, to as little as €0,13 or something like that within ther eu and thir goal is to bring that down to zero ASAP.