I have no problems with friends and family throughout the world… we have sensible ways of communicating.
It’s the folk who come to live in France … who won’t/don’t get a French sim… they are the ones I am going to have to strike off my Christmas card list… 
Most of our mobile phone use is done on WhatsApp, or texts. Only very occasionally use them for anything else and I will just have to be patient and wait ‘till I get home to check emails and then the like.
Come to ours and explain to orange that we have neighbours, yes. No, they are 230 m away. Yes, the line needs to come from their pole. No, our house has never had a phone. No, it’s not a new build. No, we do not have a number de construire. No, there are no poles just standing around in convenient places. yes, we are happy to pay for the work. And since this is France, they just can’t be arsed. So they just do their gallic shrug thing. I took the local newspaper reporter ( see the aforementioned neighbour), she wrote a piece, and they still can’t be arsed. So we have decided that a landline is just so yesterday, and we now have 100GB for 13.99 a months, rolling contract. Satellite TV x2, German and UK. Prime via B+ you. That’s on top of my Reglo 50GB. As for roaming, so far Tesco have not complained. Long may it continue!!!
Land lines with digital delivery still offer the best consistency, mobiles use delivery through space so aerials so at risk of atmospheric conditions…and I speak as someone who ran a business that mailed out Cellnet…(remember them!) bills the month they launched.
Hiya, who are you with? £7 for unlimited calls is a good one!!
It’s in the news now that it will be illegal to enter the EU from UK with a ham sandwich in the car.
Specifically ham?
It still doesn’t really seem to have hit the news that it will not be possible at all after 31.1.20 - we’ve already seen specific exclusions by some countries (who shall remain nameless but the clue is “Mink Covid”) - so I can’t see us being added to the exception list on 1.1.21.
Sara, it’s iD Mobile. Always ToTPs with Martin Lewis’s Moneysavingexpert/SIM only deals. I got in when they launched - £5 p.m. 250 mins/3Gb data/silly number texts. Have been using that for some years, mostly ex-UK.
On the Moneysavingexpert site it posts the unltd calls/unltd texts/4Gb data for £6 p.m. but that link didn’t work for me. I went through my iD Mob account app and it charged £7, which is still excnt value.
If not already an iD customer you will need a UK address. I don’t think they mind if you use a pal’s address. The FR ‘Free’ SIM card [2€ p.m.] I signed up to sent the card to a pal in FR, no question asked, who sent it on to SP. You’ll need someone to stick it in their phone to activate it in UK. I didn’t have the use of my Free SIM till I got within range of a FR network.
I think they will be made an offer they can’t refuse. I have found, in FR and in SP, that ‘docamenti’ always want a phone number, one reason is that confirmation codes by SMS are increasingly used by banks and others to validate it’s really you, wanting to do whatever it is you want to do.
I have never had +44/0044 number accepted by one of these forms. It’s got to be local. As I still have commitments in SP I have to have a SP SIM card. Now, here in FR I have to have a FR SIM. Credit Mutuel are still using that clunky ‘reply to this SMS with the 4 figure number at postion C3 on your code card’. Nat West gave it up years ago. La Caixa have just given that system up. Now it’s back, with Cr Mut!.. 
So, with the UK SIM, I now need a 3-slot phone! I don’t know if they exist. My very excellent Motorola G6 has 2. It’s a pain having to keep a second phone charged up in case of a call from that country.
Just to add it uses the 3 network, so good to check how good the signal is where you might be. For me it’s poor.
Also despite the well meaning site what they dont tell you is the roaming download limits which most cap at 20- 25 Gb, not very well documented is EE who allow up to 50Gb so enough to also watch films etc on netflix etc. With all the troubles this year EE lifted the download limit and I was able to use all 80Gb whilst in France. In our village we get a decent 4g signal at last and data speeds around 30-35 mbits which is faster than most of our neighbours landline internet without the connection disconnection issues.
I took Netflix 30 day free intro offer. I resigned 24 hrs later. To do this you have to phone them, obviously so you can be talked into staying. I told the guy I would be happy to stay if he could find films on their list by the following directors: for example …
Kurosawa ? No. Almodovar ? No. Alain Resnais? No. Michael Powell ? No. Buñel ? No. Krzysztof Kieślowski, director of the 'Three Colours: Red, White, Blue trilogy ? No. So it went on.
You might call this stuff ‘Art Cinema’. Call it what you like, these are the cream of the creators of cinema. I have been stuck in sitting rooms with Netflix movies for children playing… I understand the appeal.
Other streaming service are available…
My Meizu note9 (look it up) has, as is normal now, a fingerprint reader. But I am one of those with very weak fingerprints, so that feature of the phone is too frustratingto use. Reminds me of the trip to Perigueux to get our CdSs in Oct '18 … all went perfectly until the time for them to take fingerprints … did get there in the end, but a tense 4 or 5 mins.
Jane, have you ever received 4g from free? I have the €2 package as well - it has a tiny internet allowance, but I’ve never, in over a year, seen any 4g.
So true Christopher. We have Netflix (the kids put it on - no idea how as I am not paying for it - mind you they are teenagers and wizzes with technology) but whenever I look at it I can never find anything worth watching.
Not really secure though, it is owned by Facebook and shares all your contacts with FB (even though they promised they wouldn’t when they bought them for legal reasons, I think they held out about 18 months). So for people who care about Zuckerberg not ruling the world and having everyone’s information it is a very poor choice and if you have friends in contacts that feel like that they automatically loose their rights to keep their number / name away from FB. It is quite disgusting really how they are selling everyone out, they want to rule the planet. There are REALLY good options like Telegram (I even read one article that said 'if you want to see what is coming next on WA use Telegram) that keep you and your friends much safer than WA. Not having a go at you really John, just frustrates me how people don’t realise what is happening and just blindly use what they are told to without looking at the big picture and options other than FB / WA.
Crikey that is too expensive for me - especially when there are such cheap deals around! 
That drives me NUTS I have a friend that I’m rarely in touch with any more as my preferred method of touching base is texting. She has been here 5 years, I think it is terrible!
We can HIGHLY recommend The Trial of the Chicago Seven and The Queens Gambit
I am one of those with, a.t.mo, one of these
A small piece of the white of my fried egg was hanging over the edge of the plate. I used that finger to flip it back over. A mere 1/2 second! I had no idea that fried egg white could retain that level of heat! Wasn’t 'arf painful.
I did worry that I wouldn’t be able to use the fingerprint reader to boot the phone or open apps but it didn’t seem to mind the blistered bit. You can see the lines quite clearly and evidently so could the f/p reader.
So now we know …
“That drives me NUTS I have a friend… She has been here 5 years, I think it is terrible!”
Tory, how does she deal with SMS confirmations from French banks etc ? I’ve never had a UK number accepted by a non-UK institution or biz.
They may be getting your TV to mirror their phone.
This thread has reminded me to sort out a replacement SIM for my Vodafone one, as I too received the same text a while back but had forgotten about it. Think I’m going to try Sosh, as already have one Orange SIM which works great where we live in the Médoc.
I am kinda tempted to wait a bit longer. Having previously worked for Vodafone for several years, I know how bad they are at sharing data across applications… They still give me a fantastic employee discount despite me having resigned two years ago 
