Using a US cell phone in Paris
 

ATT assures me I can use my cell phone in Paris for $10 per day. Is there anything special I need to do to use the phone? Do I need to add a country code? All Paris phone numbers seem to start with an "01"-do I dial that always? Thanks...

$10 per DAY? Plus calls and data use, of course. At roaming rates. Get set for a huge bill.

Get a local SIM and save a bunch. If your phone is locked to ATT, get a cheap used unlocked phone from eBay or Amazon or for a little extra when you buy your French SIM card. The phone store will explain the way to dial French and foreign numbers. Or even get a calling program that works on wifi and save even more.

Same here : just buy a phone with a SIM card or just the SIM card.

When I travel abroad and my calls are expensive I use WhatsApp once I have free wifi.

As for phone numbers, I enter all my contacts with 'international' ('+') then country code (33 for France) then the phone number without the zero (I think the only country where the '0' stays is Italy).

+ 33 1 12 23 34 45 could be a valid phone number.

No, it's not going to be $10 a day - that's just what AT&T will take so you can keep your own phone. There will be significant other charges.

Get a French SIM card. If your phone is unlocked, just switch out the SIM cards. If it's not, you'll have to pay to get it unlocked (or you can search online for an unlocking code) or buy a cheap used unlocked phone.

The 01 area code is for Paris landlines. Cellphone numbers will normally begin with 06 (sometimes 07). Once in France with a French SIM card, you dial the full 10-digit number. If calling from abroad, you omit the zero and add the country code (or +)

I have to disagree somewhat with StCirq and AJPeabody. We use AT&T for our carrier in the US. We just spent 10 days in Norway and Sweden and elected to pay the $10/day for my phone and also for my wife's phone. You can read more about the program at https://www.att.com/offers/international.html. The basics of the plan is it lets you use your current plan in covered parts of Europe (covers most places) for $10 a day. If your plan is unlimited data then that's what you get, if you don't have unlimited data then your bound the same data restrictions you have at home. You have unlimited texts to 120 countries as well. The one thing I'm not clear on is calls, I believe there are charges for calls. But I had no plans to make calls so I didn't research that aspect.

My plan has unlimited data, calls and texts. I'm looking at my bill from before the trip and my bill from during the trip. I used the plan for 10 days and paid an extra $130. The extra $30 was for additional taxes and fees that were applied. There were no additional data fees or roaming.

There is nothing you need to do other than have the international plan added to your plan. You only get charged if you use the phone. If you truly turn everything off (data, roaming, etc) for an entire day...or simply turn your phone off, you don't get charged for that day. You only get charged the $10 if you use any aspect of your phone during a 24 hour period.

We were very pleased with the plan and the costs ended up being close to what I was expecting. Just thought you'd like to hear my recent hands-on experience.

$10 per day is nothing short of astronomical. I pay 20€ per month for unlimited: data, MMS, SMS, and calls throughout the EU as well as to North America. The US telephone companies are nothing other than thieves.

At a minimum, you can get one of the prepaid Orange plans at the airport and save a bundle.

For US customers it is simpler and cheaper to get a month-by-month plan with T-Mobile. Mine covers 140 countries.

I don't deny that $10 a day seems higher than it should be over/above your current cell bill. I was just saying that the $10 fee wasn't far off from what I experienced recently.

My phone is locked so I'd have to get another phone with a different number for my trips. Since I only travel every 3 or 4 years I can handle $100 to not have to deal with the hassle.

In anycase for French numbers you just dial the number. Your phone knows it is in France.
If you would rather use the international code then use +33 and drop the first zero in the number.

With Verizon's $10 a day plan, you have unlimited calls to the US and the country you're in. If ATT is the same, it's not a bad way to go for a short trip. Compare $10 per day vs. the cost of a French SIM card... I'm willing to pay a bit more for convenience. For a long trip, obviously the French SIM is a better deal.

If your AT&T phone is paid for it's not a problem to unlock it.

https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/#/

https://www.wirefly.com/guides/how-u...att-cell-phone

>>> Is there anything special I need to do to use the phone?
Yes. Read the FAQ. https://www.att.com/offers/internati.../day-pass.html
Must be provisioned on a per-device basis before use.

There are plenty of inexpensive non-contractual SIM cards for tourists available in France and throughout Europe now, starting as low as 3,99 euros and rechargeable online and at any supermarket. Orange, SFR, Free, and other providers offer them. And there are no longer any roaming charges in Europe.

We're ATT customers and just returned from nearly 3 months in France and Spain. Before leaving the US, we purchased the ATT International Plan for $60 per month per apparatus. You get 1GB total (all apparatus) of data per month for that price. If you exceed 1GB (we did once), it's an extra $50 per GB. We had two iPhones and an iPad on the Plan. Absent this Plan, each day we used one of the apparatus, ATT would charge us $10. If we used all 3 apparatus on any given day, ATT would charge us $30. Thus, the $10 a day plan can get very expensive for long stays. Twice, at the beginning of two monthly periods, ATT charged us both $10 a day and the $60 per apparatus, resulting in more than $500 of overcharges. I didn't catch this problem until well into the monthly periods. After I complained, ATT agreed and deleted all the $10 a day charges it had assessed. The lesson there is to check more frequently your usage.

When I used my iPhone while in Europe to call a number in France or Spain, I had to dial 011 (to get into the international system), the country code (33 or 34) and then the local number without the first 0. To call a number in the US, I just dialed as if in the US.

While in Europe over the last few years, we have learned to put our iPhones and iPad on "Airplane Mode," even while connected to WiFi, to hold down data usage. We turn Airport Mode off when we need to use data, use the data, then turn it back on. Of course, we could avoid all this by switching to T-Mobile, which we are considering. We have also begun using VPN to enhance transmission security, especially when using a WiFi network not requiring a password, and to get TV via internet using a country appropriate IP address.

What VPN service do you use? Cost?

"No, it's not going to be $10 a day - that's just what AT&T will take so you can keep your own phone. There will be significant other charges.”

With AT&T, the $10/day IS all you pay, and, again you only pay for the days you decide to access the phone towers. Wifi, of course, is always usable for free. My son did it this summer. And, the phone calls within Europe and back to the US are free. You simply bring whatever plan you have with you (his is unlimited data and texting). Many users today are paying for the phones as part of the monthly fee and trade them in every year, so a lot of us don’t ever own them. SIM cards don’t make sense for us.

Since we were away 40 days this fall, we opted for the 30/day @$60 AT&T Passport plan. Our daughter was with us the first 10 days, and she had T-Mobile, which, as someone said, is much better when you travel in Europe. The last 30 days, we used the Passport plan, which included the 1GB of data, unlimited texting and 35 cents per minute calling in Europe and back to the US. Because there is so much wifi everywhere, we hardly nicked our 1GB of data. We also used google offline maps to make sure we wouldn’t impact it as well. For us, the monthly plan worked out better than $10/day.

We use the ATT $10/day plan too. And yes, it's just $10/day, no additional charges. Just go online or call ATT before you go to set it up. And they only charge you for the days you use it.

Having a local sim instead can be cheaper, of course, but depending on your situation, having your regular number may be worth paying more.

The main downside of having a local SIM is that your US number no longer works so your contacts cannot reach you unless you send them the new number, which would be an international call for them. If that is not a concern, go for it.
I am a former AT&T customer who used the various international roaming package options they offered over the years as they were easier than a local SIM for short trips. Now that I am with T-Mobile (and love it) European roaming is a freebie.

I'm a T-Mobile customer, but last I heard, I have to pay 20 cents per minute for phone calls in Europe (although Canada and Mexico are free). I do have free data and text messages, though. Do you have free calling in Europe as well?

Will, my husband and I are on T-mobile. Our plan lets us make free calls in France from our US number to a US number over wifi, but all three conditions must be met for it to be free (or better to say, prepaid). Calls from our US phones to a French number aren't free, so my husband bought a SIM at Leclerc for in-France calls. He found a SIM that lets him prepay in cash, rather than have our CC billed monthly. We just top it up as needed when we're near a Leclerc.

"What VPN service do you use? Cost?"

AJPeabody, I use NordVPN; cost $70 per year. In doing my research, I concluded TunnelBear would also meet my needs.

I will look into NordVPN. With the increased prevalence of hacking, I am reluctant to "go bare" any longer.

My cheapo (if $90 5 years ago was cheap) Blu unlocked Android phone takes two SIMs, so could use both a US and a foreign SIM. But I found the best solution for receiving calls from the US was to get a Google Voice number and Google Hangouts. It integrates with Gmail for text messages. Calls to US are free (uses wifi) and to European numbers are 2 or 3 cents (requires a $10 deposit from which calls are deducted). One trip I didn't even bother with a local SIM as wifi was easily available. On a trip I call forward my usual number to Google Voice and calls to me from the US are handled transparently. Just need to turn off the phone at night to prevent time zone awakenings.

I rarely use my VPN anymore for security, since almost every website has switched to SSL encryption (https). That means that all traffic between your browser and the web site is encrypted, whether you are on "open WiFi" or not. The router you connect to can see which websites you visit but not the content of the traffic.

Still...if I was worried about hacking, how would I know one of these third-party VPNs was itself safe? I'm moving my trust from dodgy hotel WiFi to the unknown (but supposedly trustworthy) VPN service I've subscribed to.

Instead, use my own VPN service at home. So when I travel (or need to access something on my home network), I connect to my home internet network's VPN. There is no third party, no VPN to subscribe to for a monthly/annual fee. I'm as secure as my home network when I connect to my VPN there.

Of course, you do have to set up the VPN one time (plus keep your home internet connection going while you are away). The hardware you need for say OpenVPN doesn't cost much; I see used WiFi routers at Goodwill all the time that would work fine as VPN servers. You just have to get someone to set it up for you once, or set it up yourself. (Hint: use certificates. Password-based VPNs are much less secure even if easier to set up.)

T-Mobile now charges 25 cents/min for calls. WiFi calling, as noted above, is free if connected to WiFi, for calls home to the US. But your phone has to support the "WiFi Calling" feature - not every phone/carrier does.

Sprint has the almost identical international roaming plan as T-Mobile. Both slow down your data ("throttle" it) to 2G speeds. I have Sprint now. My phone worked fine in Portugal in May, except that the data was too slow. So I popped in my Dutch Vodafone SIM and added 10 euros to it to give me 2GB of data good for my 9 day trip. Data was much faster.

I use my Google Voice number at home as my regular number, so when I travel, I get calls on my same number using Google Hangouts (free). Calls to US numbers are free with Hangouts, too. So, it doesn't matter what SIM I have in my phone - calls still ring in Hangouts on my US number. I don't even know what my Sprint number is - I've never given it to anyone (except Google, to forward my calls to the Sprint number).

Interesting idea, Andrew. I got my introduction to Google Voice, etc. from you. Now, how do I go about setting up my own VPN? My router comes from the cable company, as does my phone and internet. Would I need a different router? An old computer converted to Linux? Connected to my home network (which is run by the cable company's router)? I assume I would have to leave everything running while I am away from home, leaving the question of what to do if something crashes or needs rebooting or power fails longer than my backup UPS can run on its own juice. Starts sounding like using a paid VPN service would de-nerdify the process.

There are various ways to setup a VPN at home. You could keep your existing router and just set up a second one only for the VPN. The VPN server runs on the 2nd router. All you have to do is forward a port through your existing router to allow the VPN traffic to flow into the 2nd router. (It's port 1194 for OpenVPN.)

You don't need a fancy router to run OpenVPN - an old one will do - but it must be capable of running OpenVPN. Mostly, these would be routers that support a custom firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato (like putting Linux on your router, basically). I highly recommend a Tomato-capable router. Tomato is very reliable and fairly intuitive for setting up an OpenVPN server. Lots of older Cisco/Linksys routers run Tomato well. One is an old classic, the Linksys WRT54G. This is an ancient router that is generally considered obsolete for WiFi, but some versions of it will run Tomato and OpenVPN just fine. I like the Linksys/Cisco E2000 router that's a little newer and faster. I scoop these up at Goodwill because they have gigabit ethernet switches, support Tomato and OpenVPN well, and seem very reliable.

You could use a spare PC with Linux too, if you happen to have one. The 2nd WiFi router is probably easier, though, and it will consume less power if on 24/7 (about 8 watts give or take).

If your UPS is set not to come back on after the battery dies in a power failure? Then yes, the VPN at home might not serve you well. Otherwise, when the power comes back on, if the UPS turns the power back on, your cable router will just reboot and so will the 2nd VPN router.

For OpenVPN, I recommend using certificates not just a simple password. Generating the certificates one time is probably the most tricky part of the process. There are several with different names, and some are used for the server, some for the client (the "client" is your laptop, phone, or tablet that connects to the VPN).

You also need to make sure you can find an OpenVPN app that works on your devices. I don't use Windows anymore, so I don't remember what the OpenVPN options are. It's much easier with a Linux laptop. I haven't set up OpenVPN on many of my phones/tablets - I just don't see the need for it. Most of the time I use my VPN to get into my home network and wake up a server while I'm not at home, so I can retrieve photos or something. Sometimes I turn on the downstairs PC with a webcam on it so I can Skype my cat.

The other issue with a home VPN is the IP address. If you don't have a static IP, then your home IP address will change occasionally. I had to get a static IP address for my server on my fiber internet service, because I found it would change about once a day. But when I had Comcast cable, I found that even though I wasn't paying for a static IP, it still didn't change after a year or more. (COULD, in theory.)

One way around this issue is something called a Dynamic DNS. Basically, your Tomato router occasionally checks your IP to see if it has changed - and if so, it updates a name saved at some domain service. This is how I manage my mom's home network where the IP changes daily. I already pay for a domain name, so I just added another subdomain to it. There are still some free Dynamic DNS services out there but I am not familiar with them. Here's one I found at random:

https://www.dynu.com/en-US/DynamicDNS

But...if your cable IP doesn't change very often, you might not need to worry about that. Just use your home network's IP to access your home VPN.

So, if I understand you, get a router that supports OpenVPN, install OpenVPN on router and devices (mine would be an Android phone, my desktop computer (if I want to), and my travel mini-computer, an Asus X205T netbook. Then, when on untrusted wifi, I would use OpenVPN on the device to contact my OpenVPN router which would make the actual connection to whatever site I was going to use. I suspect there will be speed and possible connection/timeout issues when working from overseas. Benefits: It's mine, no ongoing costs, setup costs none beyond the router, unless I decide upon a static IP which I think there is a charge for. Benefits of purchased VPN service: Local server, increased speed (?), much less geeky setup work (but as you can tell, I have a geeky nature), but there will be ongoing costs. In either case, I could access my email and use a credit card and check financial accounts over otherwise non-secure wifi. Any errors here?

There are many Linksys WRT54G routers cheap on EBay. I also have Netgear WGT624 I bought for almost nothing at a tag sale a few years ago, with no power supply (but I have a bunch of them so may find a compatible one) and no software. I wonder if the Netgear one will do.

I'm not sure what you mean about "Local server, increased speed" of a VPN service. When you "tunnel" into a VPN (your own at home or the VPN service's), you also subject yourself to their own network speeds. If you have slow internet at home, then yes, you'll probably suffer slower connections because all traffic will be routed through your home internet. But if your home internet is pretty fast? Probably not an issue. (You would care about upload speed at home not just download speed - both would need to be fast.)

The VPN service's network is surely much faster than your home network - but they are probably also handling a lot of traffic.

I don't normally recommend people set up their own VPN at home unless they are personally a little tech-inclined. (Which you hinted that you might be.) Instead, I suggest they have a tech-savvy friend or relative do it...or just pay someone. It's a one-time setup. The setup on your phone or laptop would be the same whether you use the VPN at home or a VPN service. Many VPN services you subscribe to also use OpenVPN. It's not so much about saving money in that case - it's about getting rid of that third party VPN service that now must also be trusted instead of the dodgy hotel WiFi's network. Set it up at home and you don't have to trust a third party.

If you have some spare time and want to spend a few hours playing with it? Find a spare old router and give it a try. If someone you know has an old Linksys router laying around gathering dust, they'll probably donate it to you so they won't have to take it for electronics recycling. If the router is Tomato-capable, installing Tomato on it is pretty easy. As I said, the hardest part is generating the certificates. (You do it one time, using your laptop, There are a few "how to" sites that show you how to do that if you google. )

But if this all still sounds too intimidating to you and you would prefer not to mess with it? Sure - just sign up for one of the VPN services and hope they are trustworthy and reliable. Though personally, I think most people don't need a VPN service anymore due to SSL/https encryption used by most websites.

Thanks! I am the techy friend. I'll consult myself and see if that old Linksys can operate.

AJ

Sounds good - but we're waaaaay off topic by now. PM me if you need some tips on how to procede further with a home VPN.

@Willtravel - on our travels using T Mobile I never actually placed calls other than over WiFi so not sure. Text messaging and data were for sure gratis, and worked just fine. The slowdown to 2G was not really noticeable, but I don't often use high density apps.

I am really nervous about whether the T-Mobile call truly goes over wi-fi, as I had a bad experience in Vietnam, although they did remove the $5.99/minute charge. How do you feel confident about that?

Not all phones support the "WiFi Calling" feature. It depends on the specific phone and carrier you are using. Your call doesn't use WiFi simply because your phone is connected to WiFi when you make the call. You must specifically set up "WiFi Calling" - it is not turned on automatically, either, even if your phone does support it.

My first Android phone (with T-Mobile) supported it, and when I used WiFi calling, it was obvious that I was using it. The green "call" icon changed to indicate a WiFi call. My last few phones have not supported WiFi calling at all. But I don't need it anymore, anyway, because I use Google Hangouts instead.

You might be able to test out "WiFi Calling" this way: put your phone in Airplane Mode, then turn on WiFi and connect to WiFi. Then try making a call. I'm not sure if the phone will still let you make the call with data turned off, but it might.

Marking to weed thru above. Hoping to go back to Orleans with my son for Xmas and doing day trips to Paris.

Here's one site with lots of useful info on using phones in France:

https://en.parisinfo.com/practical-p...ices-in-france