Hi Folks,
I expect to close on my ‘new’ (to me) French house in the coming month or so, which is all very exciting.
Once there I want to have a mobile phone and the internet, no landline unless needed for an internet connection. I’ve looked at a map of internet coverage and the house is in an area which gets 4G coverage. The website shows the coverage for Bouygues Telecom, Free (sans itinerance), Orange Mobile and SFR Mobile. Coverage for all four is shown as 4G. Are they likely to be the only providers or are there others? The house is in the south of Deux Sevres.
Can anyone recommend a provider for mobile phone and internet?
We don’t have a landline and simply use our mobiles to access the internet via 4G and tether if we need internet access for laptops We use Reglo Mobile (Leclerc’s own brand) which costs us 9,95€ a month for 60G. All done online. Leclerc supermarkets also generally have Reglo support counters.
Simple, good value. Although Réglo is linked to SFR, the phones simply pick up the strongest network signal which happens to be Orange locally.
EDIT - you probably know all this, but you will also find it incredibly helpful to have a French mobile number for creating online accounts eg for your house’s utilities bills. Many utility companies sites do not seem to accept non French mobile numbers
We use 4G as well, though 60GB wouldn’t do us at all. We use Free SIMS with 210GB for €19.99 PM. W’ve two routers on a little load balancing box so we’ve 420GB PM for the house and can fall back to our mobiles for another 210GB should we ever need it.
FWIW, the same goes for Ireland, where we have encountered similar difficulties. It seems to be a common theme these days. Despite the alleged Europeanisation of society and the 4 “freedoms” of the EU, many national service providers (electricity, gas, banking, etc) still have a hissy fit when trying to set up accounts using non-dom mobile telephone numbers.
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Thanks George, John and RicePudding for your helpful replies.
Yes, they’ll be other “MVNO” (aka mobile virtual network operators) providers too, but they’ll piggy-back off the infrastructure of the big 4. The difference is in the cost and the level of customer service that you can expect to get.
Here’s a handy chart showing which MVNOs use which provider:
It might be worth speaking to your neighbours and seeing which operator they use. Although all providers may offer some service in your area, depending upon the location of the mast you may find that some are faster than others (and by extension, the same will be true of the MVNOs using that particular network too).
Edit: actually this link seems to be more up to date: Liste des MVNO | Arcep
PS - congrats on buying your new house 
Thanks for that link, Gareth
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