As you probably know I have an iPAD and needed a French PAYG SIM card for a recent trip to France.
Well firstly Sorry for being away the past few days, I should have let people know I was not going to be posting for a few days. secondly, on to the quick tidbit of help!!
I searched high and low for solid advice about how I can use my iPAD when i’m abroad. Apple and the networks are a bit like drug dealers in a way, getting you all hooked on the 3G and email on the move and then taking it away just because you want to leave the UK for a few days!! The best roaming deal I heard about was Vodafone’s 50mb deal but 3 staff at my local store here in Liverpool knew nothing about it and sent me on my way! 50mb is just not enough anyway, its ridiculous to be honest, as is paying between £3 and £7 per mb through the UK networks whilst roaming which is something I will not pay on principle.
Anyway you can get a Micro SIM for an iPAD whilst in France and this is totally practical, sound advice from my own experience.
Firstly don’t waste your time with Phone shop (they didn’t even know what a Micro SIM was!) and Orange MobiCarte were very unhelpful asking me for a French bank account before they would go ahead. Go straight to an SFR shop and ask for the “SFR 3G Pret a Surfer” product. It’s €9 for the card which gives you your number and 3 days of unlimited surfing. All you do is find an SFR shop, ask for the product which is also in their shop magazine and pay for it with cash!! You do need photo ID but a driving license was all that I needed.
They set it up and all you do is put the microsim in the iPAD and it almost works. The catch is that you need to put the APN details in yourself or you can connect to itunes and let it do it for you. I was lucky enough to find a free WiFi in Macdonalds over the road and I had my laptop with me for this very purpose. Hey presto, it detects the SIM and does it all for you!!
To extend the service you could just buy another card, but you can also buy a €6 card which gives you unlimited surfing for 24 hours. This way is very convenient as you can buy these months in advance from any Cafe Tabac or online from www.sfr.fr/ipad and all you need to do is activate them when you want them.
If you don’t speak french then you ring the 0811 number on the card, you put in the the card/coupon code and press 2 to confirm, you then put in your 06 SIM number and press 2 to confirm and then press 3 to confirm. In about 30 seconds the ipad worked! The chap at the Tabac was kind enough to do this for me and showed me how so I could recharge when I needed to.
The SFR sim itself was pretty good. It always seemed to get an edge signal and in main cities 3G was usually present. We used the iPad on tar ins and in the car, browsing, emailing and using google maps in an unrestrictive manner and it never stopped working.
So hopefully that helps, let me know if you need any more help.
Dave
