It's dead easy to get a SIM in France....armed with a passport you can be in and out in 5 minutes, with a data or voice SIM. The real problem is getting anything approaching value.

The PAYG sector has nothing even resembling value, such as we have in Ireland. For example, 20€ here will get you a Three Ireland voice SIM. The act of paying 20€ will get you unlimited (automatic) data for a month, tethering, Three Like Home, unlimited weekend calls, unlimited 3-3 calls round the clock, unlimited national SMS, access to gocall.ie and 333 international webtexts a month.

Plus -you get to keep the 20€! On the 29th day, simply convert your credit into 4x 500mb tranches of data ....

9€ In France gets you one GB of data, which, depending on network may last you a whole 3 days -7 at most!

There's even vending machines in Heathrow now selling various pay as you go sims such as the all in one Three sim for £15 and various Lebara & Lyca sims!

Yeah, we had a US colleague come over and get a Three SIM with AYCE data and he could even finish the month back home when he got back thanks to Feel at Home!!

Edit: Yes the vending machines at Heathrow are incredibly easy, and the bulk of SIMs are Three ones - although I do wonder how people decide when using them, unless they're tipped off in various travel guides before arrival?

Yes my friend didn't even realise he had his Three sim in for a while when he got home thanks to feel at home

I know if I was stood there choosing I would definitely go for the unlimited data option on Three! I suppose most people will do a bit of research before coming (like me researching for Canada)

When I was wishing for someone I did notice a few people using the machine and they all went for Three. So I guess someone is telling them too, as nobody stood around reading all the different pack descriptions.

France is a bit of a rip off when you use a prepaid sim card, because like you say even call credit (no bundles) even has a validity time dependant on how much you actually top-up; much more of a rip off really so you either top-up to use it preety much straight away or lose out, as for internet bundles well... they don't have too much choice but some of the MVNO's might offer more attractive deals.

Just spent a lovely weekend in Copenhagen. Whilst Feel at Home is great, it's also getting slower every time I use it. Just basic browsing was taking ages to load anything. When it first launched it was quite impressive, but maybe as more people use it and there's limited bandwidth back to three UK, it's slowing to a crawl.

I'm going to Spain and have a Three PAYG sim to take with me solely to use for data. Hopefully it'll be usable :-/

I used my phone on a Euro pass in Barcelona last year and it was brilliant. Spain's data has always been good for me. Very usable.

Yes, but this year it's Feel At Home and no need for Europass. Therefore, it may not be quite so brilliant.

True, I used it in France and US on Feel at Home and it was great. Used it in Italy and it was awful.

My other half, who is in France at the moment, is reporting much better coverage this year compared to last.

I advised it was due to Orange France replacing Bouygues as one of the roaming partners. However, looking up I can see that Bouygues is back, alongside Orange France and Free.

I do hope they keep all three providers. Bouygues was the better of the two (between Bouygues and Free) last year but from what I can make out, the Orange coverage is much superior.

Any news on what coverage and speeds are generally like in Spain since at home started last month? Off to visit family in the next few weeks..

I can only really comment on Barcelona, but it was excellent. This was a year ago, and I was paying the £5 a day for Internet, but the speeds (3G only, as Three still has no 4G roaming agreements and doesn't seem to have any lined up) were great. As in 10-15Mbps in many places, including the metro (that has phone coverage), and a good solid uplink of 1-3Mbps that enabled me to upload files while walking about and the phone in my pocket.

Very impressed, although it may well differ somewhat at the tourist resorts or islands!

I'm going to Barcelona in two weekends time, I'd be interested to see if the Feel at Home speeds match what you were getting last year with the paid pack.

I don't suppose you remember which network you were connected to with those speeds?

I don't unfortunately. Still, if you've got unlimited I am sure you will experiment like I did!

I'm off to New Zealand at the end of next month so I'm looking forward to giving Feel at home a run for its money out there!

Also I'm interested in how three pays for feel at home.

Do they take our usage in the feel at home countries a loss as the other networks charge them? Or is there some sort of benefit to the other network such as reduced costs of their users in the UK roaming on Three?

I mean I doubt the other network is just happy to let three use its network for free!

All the traffic is routed back to the UK via Three, so there might be a fair bit of latency.

That's the case for all roaming data though ?

It seems to vary depending on the roaming network and phone network provider. When using an EE sim roaming in the U.S. you get a UK IP on AT&T but a U.S. one on T-Mobile.

Sorry for digging up an old thread. And the answer might already be in this thread somewhere.
Recently I moved abroad and in a couple of months I am planning on going on a trip to the United States. Now here in Austria the PAYG data roaming options are terrible. I can actually only get a bundle when going to the 3 countries Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark, that's it (7.50 Euro for 1,000 minutes, 1,000 text messages and 1GB of data). In the USA I would pay 5,00 Euro per MB.
If I get someone to send me a Three SIM card, would they need to activate the card first by popping it in their phone? Or can I just do that here and top up myself? And yes, I am aware I wouldn't be able to use the card abroad over and over again without using it in the UK.

No, there's nothing to activate. Pop it in the phone and away you go. The only problem you might encounter is getting a SIM sent through the post. Many European postal services now remove the,

You can simply buy a SIM on eBay.
Mine already came activated (just pop it in and it should work).
Topping up only works with an UK ossued credit card.
prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/United_Kingdom
(Have a look under Recharges)

Using the "topup without registering" option I was able to top up with both an Irish debit card and a French credit card. No problem.

Grüß Gott!

I have actually no idea if you do German but oh well.

Yeah as others say should just work. Those roaming prices aren't nice either,