Hi
Currently buying a holiday home in France, but as far as I understand I need to have a phone number to set up utilities. I cannot find online a method of having a French contract and phone number without doing this in France. Is this correct?
I never solved the problem of acquiring and activating a French SIM purely in the UK.
But this guide might help
Can you now just get an eSIM?
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If you have a phone, just go into any Leclerc supermarket and get a Reglomobile sim. No contract and very cheap.
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Problem is I am in UK, but need phone number to set up utilities on house I am purchasing. Should have sorted this last time in France. Completing the Compris de Vente online, so unlikely to return to France until just before completion. So still a few months to go, may have to visit just to arrange phone contact.
It looks like the Lycamobile SIM that I bought in France
could be shipped to the UK.
The main caveat is that, although activation was straightforward in France, I don’t know if it can be activated in the UK.
Also - roaming data in the UK is not really useable.
Maybe a sneaky day-trip to Calais and stock up on wine while you are at it? 
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There is a UK company that provides the service you need. PM me and I can share the details
Many thanks.
I have ordered the SIM.
Let us know how it goes - especially whether it will activate in the UK.
Will do, but will try to activate just before completion, so a little while yet.
I got an eSIM from OnOff that linked to my existing UK (Smarty) physical SIM. As soon as I got my internet set up France I added an eSIM from the same company and have been like that ever since. I still have my UK line as it’s just £8 pm for 60GB and I can use data/calls back to UK vs paying a pricey add-on to the French number for the same thing. And the French line is only €8 pm too.
I bought a house in France in December 2024 and set up SAUR for water and EDF for electricity supplying my yahoo email address and GB mobile and landline as contact details as well as my GB and French address, also the compromis de vente. It may have helped that I was buying from a British seller who had been a customer of SAUR and EDF, something I mentioned in my initial dealings with them, No-one said anything to me about having to have a French phone number. I had also set up a French bank account with Credit Agricole (Britline) with enough money in to satisfy any utility company.
Have you actually asked the utilities companies if a French phone number was a requirement? I would be interested to hear? Has anyone out there reading this thread heard a similar report of a French contact phone being a requirement?
Many thanks, RMH,
The difficulty we encountered was that the French format is 10 digits, the UK 11. So if the relevant field is set up to take exactly 10 digits, it won’t accept a UK number.
We did not have a French mobile number to start with, but found we did not need one to set up utilities.
Freemobile do a 2 euro per month sim deal, enabling you to have a basic French phone, but probably won’t give you all that you need.
All details on their website.
I think, once the leading zero is dropped, a UK number is 10 digits but you do need the international dialling code, as you’ll know +44 for the UK.
Yes, technically the “0” is the trunk code and not actually part of the number, however when dialling a full UK number you need the “0” unless you are dialling a local number which would be 5-8 digits depending on location. There are also 3-digit and 4-digit special numbers.
It’s slightly different in France (mainland) where numbers are 8 digits, prefixed with a 2 digit code.
There are possibly some exceptions in the UK plan but I think all French numbers are 10 digits (well, 9 digits as the leading 0 is, again, the trunk access code).
I toyed with the idea of having a VoIP phone and writing a number plan which allowed dialling of 11 digit (UK) numbers and 10 digit (French) numbers “natively” with no need of country codes but then came to the conclusion it was largely a waste of time as we rarely used the landline anyway (and it has now disappeared following my squabble with Orange).
For what it’s worth I have added the international dialling codes to all numbers in my contacts so I don’t need to muck around the code when I dial in country or out.
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one! It’s become automatic for me to add the correct prefix whenever anyone tells me their number.
That used to drive me nuts in my last job dealing with people in the UK who had international in their job title but didn’t have the international dialling code in their signature block. Trivial perhaps but it meant that you couldn’t just click on the number and dial plus, due to the applied security policy, you couldn’t copy and paste between an email and the phone app.