Telephone, WiFi Question

[Porsche44]

I don't know if anyone can help me with this but here goes. We are travelling to DLP, France & Italy from Australia and will be travelling around for 7 weeks. My son has an IPhone & we want to have WiFi internet so we can Skype home. I was thinking of buying a phone/internet plan when we arrive in Paris, a sim card for the IPhone & a dongle for our laptop. Can anyone give me an idea of how to do this and where we would go in Paris to organise it?

 

[Jonjo]

There are plenty of free wi-fi spots around in major towns in Europe. I always look out for a McDonald's or a Starbucks and use their free wi-fi, and most hotels have free wi-fi in their public areas as well.

If you want a wi-fi dongle for your laptop, I'd sugest you get one localy before you leave home.

 

[Carrie_Cat]

For sim cards the one that a lot of people over on TA recommend is Lebara

http://www.lebara.com/ or http://www.lebara.fr/

You also have Frenchmobile but I've read less about them

http://www.lefrenchmobile.com/en/data-bundles.html

This page might also be of interest

http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/France

You could always go over to the TA Paris forum and ask them for more info

 

[zanzibar138]

Hello fellow Aussie

You should be able to use your iphone as a wifi hotspot for your laptop, so if you get a SIM with a decent data plan, you shouldn't have to get a separate dongle.

Also you may want to check out this thread in the Australia forum

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2925094

I haven't actually read all of it since it's not of specific interest to me, but I assume that it's more geared towards the US. Still, it could be worth checking out.

Personally I always just use free wifi when I'm away - there are heaps of hotspots around now, and there are quite a lot of hotels that offer free wifi too if it's important for you to be able to use it in your room. All the hotels we're staying at in Europe have free wifi.

For our phones (we generally only take 1), we just get a travel SIM and use it sparingly. We usually find we don't really need to use it, but on the occasions where you need to contact home, travel agents, or insurance companies, it does come in handy. We like the travel SIM because you can use it in a lot of different countries. On the few occasions that we split up, we just do it the old-fashioned way and make a time and a place to meet up again