Hope you can give me some advise. We spend 6 months of the year in France staying in our residential mobile home.
We want to get Internet access but do not have a French bank account. We are thinking of getting a prepaid data only sim card and then buying an appropriate router. Do you think this is a valid option? Do you know of any providers that maybe supply both as there is in the UK. We are concerned that the router doesn’t recognise the sim card.
Any advise would be appreciated.
How do you manage payments? If you do need a French bank account then Britline is OK.
If you have a decent 4/5G signal chez vous then yes - the first step is probably to see what speed you get on your phone(s).
I think most of the big telecos in France do a “4G box” of some kind. Google “<operator> 4G box”
Well, if you buy a SIM plus router package you aren’t going to have any issues. If you want flexibility you could buy a generic 5G router in the UK (Amazon sell them as does an outfit called broadbandbuyer.com) which will not be locked to a particular service provider.
Or, if you have one kicking around, an old phone used as a “Hot Spot” - I got a perfectly serviceable 30Mbps download out of my old Moto G8 plus and a Popit SIM last week (my Internet is a bit on the blink at the moment so I needed a backup - which ended up being used quite a bit.
To be fair the Popit SIM is expensive (100Gb for £25/mo) but it can be paused when you are in the UK (there are stipulations that a minimum amount of data is used in the UK) and all of the data allowance is available for use in France.
Then there is still the LeClerc sim, very cheap large amount of data and no contract.
Highly recommended, although I do not have a data requirement.
Thanks Billy for the useful info. We make payments via our Starling euro account so dont really need a bank apart from sorting out the internet. Going to try a boutique and Le Clerc and if no joy will ask somebody visiting us to bring from the UK an unlocked Huawei router from Amazon. Not sure the same ones on Amazon France are unlocked.
Will call in today for a look.
The EU passed some rule a while back to make phones and routers unlocked to all networks I believe. Even seen mifi units on sale in Aldi’s in France.
Advice.
I resisted. But he might be American.
On that point I was surprised to see that on an American drivers’ forum the Canadians largely use English English spelling but someone said that there does seem to be something of an East/West divide as to that.
Oh deer duz it realy mater?
But going back to the more serious responses, I visited LeClerc and they said they don’t offer data only sims on a prepaid basis, and pointed me towards Orange.
I was in LeClerc this morning looking at mobile phones etc… and noticed above the sales counter… they had the same large sign in many languages
“Direct Debits are required”
but whether that was just for mobile phones… not clear…
I dont have a French bank account Stella, so direct debit is not available to me.
Now thinking of ordering a Huawei B320 router from Amazon UK and have a friend bring it over. The router comes with a Smarty sim card.
I was thinking of you when I saw that sign, this morning… 
Don’t forget that’s 4G only - not an issue if you only have 4G available and it’s way cheaper than most 5G models, but if you have a 5G signal you might want to check out kit that can make use of the potential for higher speeds.
By the way, did you check out what you get by running a speed test on your phone?
Are you and Stella capitalising the ‘c’ in Leclerc on purpose…?!? 
Incidentally we looked into a PAYG data only SIMs for my mother-in-law, and couldn’t find anything. I’m sure we checked with Orange & Sosh at the time (cause we’re with them) and they didn’t have anything suitable. We ended up having to go for a bog standard contract in the end… which I realise isn’t an option for you without a French bank account. Just thought I’d share my experience.
Only 4G here in this part of Charente Maritime Billy. No not check phone speed, if fast enough how would that help me? I am not the brightest button.
If its good enough for Stella and Corona, its good enough for me.
For general browsing, YouTube etc you probably want 10Mbps, for 4k video about 25Mbps - as long as you get these speeds on your phone you should (depending on variation between operators) be OK with a 4G router.
If you are getting significantly less than this you might want to look at (cough) Starlink.
[cough because as regular readers will know, I am most definitely not a fan of Mr Musk}
For heaven’s sake, don’t take any of my spelling as correct… no matter which language… so long as people can understand… that’s good enough for me 