Lebara - anyone use them?

I experienced this when I was with Orange. Bizarrely, having moved to Sosh (the budget brand owned by Orange) I am now kept fully informed by text of every stage of any interventions.

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Just switched to an O2 contract giving me 25GB roaming for a tenner per month. I’ll cancel the Lebara contract tonight.

Lebara give up to 30Gb and a tenner? That buys a lot of data oh dont forget 100 included international minutes

I couldn’t make the Lebara sim work in France for data - no idea why. Giffgaff use the O2 network, so changing should make little difference, hopefully.

That’s odd - I am on Lebara in the UK (with an iPhone 13) and it works happily for me in France. Or are you talking about a French Lebara SIM?

It just requires a setting change. APN access point name, uk.lebara.mobi password, wap username wap.

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UK SIM.

I did go to their help page about settings, but they all seemed to have been updated from the SIM card, and were correct, ended up spending quite a bit of time on it. Perhaps I just overlooked something, but if so, it wasn’t obvious. In the end I developed a dose of CBA and got on with doing other things. :slight_smile:

Was data roaming turned on?

Yes. Good question to ask though.

Normally its a manual adjustment the first time, Add an APN then manually type in as I wrote earlier, save and restsrt the phone

I had previously done a full reset on the phone, so perhaps that’s why it populated the settings. All the information was as described in the web link. I also tried switching roaming networks in case the default Orange wasn’t working well with the combination. There we some issues with my regular phone at the same time, with gaps in the network that I’d never seen before when driving, and also problems with data when used as a hotspot requiring a restart to resolve temporarily.

Hmmm puzzling, the only time I had it fail was on my wifes phone at the time which for some strange reason also refused to work in France for data. When I replaced that phone and changed the settings its all been good since.

That said my LG phone seems to have packed in this trip, fortunately the older LG phone is with me and is now the hot spot until new router arrives tomorrow. I am on the broken phone now and its just on wifi created from the Lebara sim in the old phone. No connection from the same SIM if put in this phone?? Oh well tech, great when it works.

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A possible benefit of O2 is getting voice over WiFi with this card, which I definitely didn’t have with either Lebara or Giffgaff. This phone doesn’t have it built in (apparently) but it’s mentioned in O2 materials and is showing as possible in the top bar. This is important because I work in a place with no mobile signal, and I cannot make or receive calls here normally.

Can we not tempt you to join the Dark Side and become an Apploid instead of an Android? :smiley: That might help…

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Nope! No Apple in this house, our Friend Kane Kramer, the real inventer of the ipod was had over by said Apple.

Hi,
Hope this is not off topic.
My daughter is going to France for a year for work experience.
I want to get her a French esim for her iPhone 13 to go with her Irish Sim. Anyone recommend the best deal. Saw Lebara but as someone said it needs a French id. Anyone recommend one with 100G a month?
Thanks
Patrick

I suspect I need to go down this route (getting a French mobile - though I need a physical SIM, not an eSIM) so will be interested in how you get on.

The French teleco’s do seem to want ID, which might need to be French, though plenty of people have 2nd homes in France and might not have French ID, but do ā€‰want a French mobile - so I don’t see why, say, a UK passport would not be acceptable (but it is France, after all :slight_smile: ).

Still have to present my UK passport in LeClerc before being allowed a Sim card. Still paying with UK debit card €8.95 for 100gb

More important is ensuring she’s on a network with good coverage in the area she’ll be. In a lot of places other than large towns and cities some networks may have zero or poor coversge. After that there’s what is the level of customer service if she hits problems. In a lot of cases in France you’re looking on a spectrum from frustrating to atrocious.

Safest might be Orange who have shops and by French standards, just about OK service a lot of the time. Coverage rarely an issue - if Orange neteork not there, there’s probably no network at all. Orange is more expensive than others for this though. But for her case consider seriously as it takes away as much hassle factor as can be taken away in France She can go into a shop for help if she needs to, on Orange.

Orange’s online only arm is called sosh. Same network ie Orange, Orange shops won’t help sosh customers but sosh customer service still OK. Cheaper than Orange, but not as cheaper as it should be. Except for promo periods one of which may have its last full day tomorrow Tuesday 9th July. Orange does eSims, I can’t remember if sosh does but I think so.

To stay on Orange network and have the full Low Cost hardly-any-service experience, but does eSims, current cheapest is YouPrice 160Gb for 11 euros rolling monthly cancel any time SIM. Current round of this promo LAST DAY TOMORROW TUESDSAY 9TH JULY, they have cheaper packages too, they start at about 6 euros. All on Orange network.

NRJ runs on Bouygues, a good network for data if it covers where she is, similar sorts of rolling monthly SIM deals to YouPrice.

She might need a French bank account to bill these to but often the Belgian IBAN provided by Wise is acceptable for billings in France. Thinking she could give her employer’s address to get started if she doesn’t know where she’s staying yet - she’ll need a French address to sign up. Her Irish passport should be OK to send as ID especially as it’s EU.

PS Lebara is moving to SFR this month from Orange, no coverage in my area so I’m bsck to Sosh tomorrow. I have NRJ at Ā£1 a month (current offer ending tmorrow but the Ā£2 per month offer is better for more people) as a backup in case my main network goes down but requires me to move half a km from home to get a signal.

I was highly attracted by the unbelievable offers for big Gb on YouPrice especislly as not al the cheapie co’s offer eSim and intend to watch them but for now need stability so for now it’s back to a rolling SIM on sosh.

Lebara France customer service is quite good but 6 weeks into a promo deal with them they imposed a mandatory 30% price rise - I considered this a dirty bait & switch tactic and was planning to leave them for that anyway. There is not much honour in French Telecom.