data in France | orange's "Internet Max" (500MB for €9) works also on PCs

[inquisitor]

Hello world,

Having returned from France today, where I used an orange prepaid SIM ("mobicarte"), I wanted to share my experience with you:

Allthough the t&c's of orange state, that the "Internet Max" option (500MB of data for € 9, limited to 30 days) is valid for handset use only, you can use those 500MB from a computer, too. Even EDGE and HSDPA are enabled.

However some ports seem to be blocked.

Anyway the following protocols/ports are definitely opened:
HTTP (port 80 and 8080)
HTTPS (port 443)
FTP (port 21)
SMTP (port 25)
POP3 (port 110)
ICQ (port ?)

So with virtually € 0,018/MB "Internet Max" is a really attractive tariff to get mobile internet during your stay in France.

orange mobicartes are sold at ebay.fr for less than € 10 and credit can be purchased just everywhere throughout the country.

regards,

Inquisitor

[moua]

It's unlimited.
They just reserve the right to cap your speed if you use more than 500MB.

However prices are high for voice, my advice is to use a callback system like jajah (you have unlimited data anyway to use it), even for national calls.

I use it like this.

[fedeprovenza]

it's important to say again that you've to recharge that sim every month, not very cheap

[inquisitor]

Recharging the mobicarte with less than € 10 extends validity for 1 month, but any recharge of € 10 or more prolongs validity by 6 months.
So keeping an Orange mobicarte permanently active maybe doesn't pay off, if you need it only for a week per year in France.
But even if you include the inital cost for the purchase of an Orange mobicarte (at least at eBay) a month of unlimited data costs € 19 (€ 14 for a SIM including € 5 of credit and shipping + € 5 recharge to have enough credit for the Internet Max option).
In my opinion that's still rather cheap. With my German postpaid O2 SIM I would get 2.1 MB of volume in France for € 19.

[fedeprovenza]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Recharging the mobicarte with less than € 10 extends validity for 1 month, but any recharge of € 10 or more prolongs validity by 6 months.

are you sure? here i only read it's necessary to recharge every month

[inquisitor]

I think we talk at cross purposes.

I was writing about the validity of the SIM card itself, while you obviously mean the validity of credit, which is shorter depending on the amount of recharge:

5€ - 1 week
10€ - 15 days
15€ - 1 month
25€ (+ 5€ bonus) 2 months
35€ (+ 10€ bonus) 3 months
50€ (+ 15€ bonus) 4 months
75€ (+ 25€ bonus) 4 months
100€ (+ 50€ bonus) 5 months

source: http://sites.orange.fr/ge/content/pd..._mobicarte.pdf, page 3

[fedeprovenza]

Good, you've the reason, i mean the credit.