You get data plan in France at “free”. The plan is so attractive that we now use the SIM card across Europe.
We value 3 things regarding mobile internet: LTE, prepaid and a high data volume. In France, we use:
LTE data plan in France – free
(April 2019)
free offers 100 GB for 19,99 € plus 10 € for the SIM card (= 0.30 €/GB). The volume is valid for 30 days.
Purchasing it is however a little bit tricky:
- You get the SIM card exclusively from French speaking machines. You’ll find the next machine via the machine finder on the free website.
- Don’t be irritated by the screens on the machine (and even later in the confirmation mails). They always talk about “subscribe” respectively “subscriber” even if you get the prepaid version.
- Just choose the 100 GB data plan; and then pay attention: You can choose between “Pas de limite de validité” (indefinitely value) and “Valide 1 mois” (valid for 1 month). Here, you have to choose the later to get the prepaid plan.
- The next steps are self explaining. If they ask for a French address, just pick any postal code and then use the auto completion feature to enter any address. free just uses the email address for all later communication – thus the email has to be definitely valid and yours.
- Now pay and take your already activated SIM card with you.
Using it in entire Europe
And the best of it: The data plan is even valid for roaming. However, they cut the volume to 25 GB, which is still a great offer (= 1.10 €/GB for SIM card + 1 month).
You can easily prolong the data plan at the end of the run time via their website for one or two month or even indefinitely. We decide for a 2 month prolongation for 19.99€ each (= 0.93 €/GB for SIM card + 3 Monate).
Our hardware
We use the SIM cards with our LTE Router Netgear Nighthawk M1, that provides us with Wifi in our motorhome.
Our fallback
If we need to get internet urgently and don’t have a local SIM card yet or local data plans are too expensive, we have an Europe Prepaid Data SIM Card. You pay 59€ Transatel and get 10 GB. The data volume can be used across Europe and is valid for 30 days (= 5.90€/GB).
Update 07.10.2019: As of now the Data SIM Card for Europe only exists in a 3 GB version..