Mobile interweb in France

[caLLous]

I'm moving to France for a while next week and have been warned in advance that where I'm going is yet to be graced with broadband of any description. Apparently, according to a friend who recently went to the area (outside Carcassonne in the south), they don't even achieve 56k 'speeds'.

What are my options with regards to a 3g datacard or something similar? Whenever I've looked into these in the past (for use in England) they were aimed at business users, what are the costs involved? PAYG/contract? Obviously I won't be doing any heavy downloading (or any downloading at all for that matter, sniff - buhbye 720p tv) but casual browsing and chatting type activities are not something I want to be doing without.

I'll be travelling around the area a fair bit and don't really want to be restricted to cafes and/or plugging into a wall somewhere. Having never surfed outside the UK I don't really know what to expect but I can't find a 3g coverage map of France for love nor money.

Any travellers amongst us that have worked this out previously? Thanks and all that!

 

[Guest]

buy a datacard in france, not in england as the roaming charges will cost the earth.

best one is the Sierra 850 wireless data card

when i worked at O2 they used them there.

or there is the newer Sierra Wireless AirCard 880E ExpressCard

these are for the smaller pcmcia slots found in new laptops.

hope that helps.

 

[caLLous]

Cheers Brooky. I've now moved and am connected at 28.8k, which is just naaaaasty. It's so slow MSN refuses to upgrade because I 'need to be online to use Live services' (or something similar). It tells me this while I'm (laggily) conversating on MSN.

I like the look of that 880E you mentioned, I will definitely look into that. In the meantime I've pursuaded the homeowner to sign up for satellite web, which can *apparently* go upto 24mbit and will do while I'm at home. 2mbit for ~30 euros a month seems pretty reasonable, although I don't fully understand the deal with 'no uplink'.

/me researches further...

 

[throdgrain]

I was in Normandy recently they had wireless there, wernt awesome but it was ok. Indeed the local Mcdonalds had it, let alone the hotel.