England and France

[Yugopro]

I need info on what prepay provider in England would have the best rates and best roaming rates in France. Virgin seems to be spoken of highly, but I have no way to judge. Anyone have any personal experience or feedback from friends? I am itching to put another sim into my t39, damn good phone!

[northform]

Depends on what you need. Vodafone has the best service in the UK, but others might give you better rates with less coverage.

[UK2US]

Try Orange network. Its one of the cheapest as well when receiving incoming calls whilst in France.

[josepho]

Coverage in the UK isn't a huge factor in choosing what provider to go with. Unless you go way up in the Highlands or some other remote part then you'll most probably get coverage everywhere. One of the benefits of having a small(-ish) country is that its not too hard for providers to give nearly 100% coverage.

Although Orange does have pretty decent prices relatively (35p/10p - Peak/Off-peak) I'd probably go for O2 who have an extra bonus (35p/10p/2p - Peak/Off-peak/Weekend). Its always quite expensive to call other mobile networks, but not much you can do about that... [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

UK2US was right when he said you'd get good rate receiving calls in France, although I still think we get ripped off when roaming internationally. The comparison of Orange / o2 in France is as follows:

Receving Calling UK Calling Europe Calling outside Europe Text Message
Orange 60p 120p 120p 200p 40p
o2 80p 73p 73p ? (prob. less than 200p) 49p

Personally, unless you're gonna make a lot of weekend calls within the UK, I'd go for Orange.