You can make domestic and international
phone calls
from any telephone box (
cabine
) and can receive calls where there's a blue logo of a ringing bell. A
50-unit (€6.19) and 120-unit (€14.87) phone card (called
a télécarte
) is essential, since coin boxes are being phased out.
Phone cards
are available from
tabacs
and newsagents as well as post offices, tourist offices and some train station ticket offices. You can also use
credit cards
in many call boxes. Coin-only boxes still exist in cafés, bars, hotel
foyers and rural areas; they take 50 centimes, 1F, 5F or 10F pieces;
put the money in after lifting up the receiver and before dialling. You
can keep adding more coins once you are connected. Local calls are
costed in France at €0.123 for three minutes (€0.15 minimum);
long-distance calls within France cost up to €0.37 for three
minutes depending on the distance. Off-peak charges apply on weekdays
between 7pm and 8am and after noon on Saturday until 8am Monday.
For calls within France - local or long-distance - simply dial all
ten digits of the number. Numbers beginning with tel 08.00 are free
numbers; those beginning with tel 08.36 are premium-rate (from
€0.34 per minute), and those beginning with 06 are mobile and
therefore also expensive to call. The major international calling codes
are given in the section, "Phone numbers and dialing codes"; remember
to omit the initial zero of the local area code from the subscriber's
number.
Cheap rates operate between 7pm and 8am
Monday to Friday, from midnight to 8am and noon to midnight on
Saturday, and all day Sunday. From a private phone, a call to the UK ( Royaume-Uni ) will cost between €0.25 and
€0.38 per minute, from a public phone €0.33-0.39; to
Ireland €0.30-0.45 per minute or €0.45-0.54; to
the US ( États-Unis ) and Canada €0.30-0.45 per minute
or €0.45-0.54; to Australia and New Zealand
€0.66-1 per minute or €1.23-1.55. By far the
most convenient way of making international calls is to use a calling card , opening an account before you leave home;
calls will be billed monthly to your credit card, to your phone bill if
you are already a customer or to your home address. However, the rates
per minute of these cards are many times higher than the cost of
calling from a public phone in France, with flat rates only. The best
value is offered by Interglobe (tel 020/7972 0800; 50p/min to the UK),
followed by AT&T (tel 0500/626262; $US1.50/min to the UK), then
Cable and Wireless Calling Card (tel 0500/100505; 68p/min to the UK),
and Swiftcall Global Card (tel 0800/7691444; 70p/min to the UK).
British Telecom's BT Charge Card (tel 0800/345600 or 0800/345144)
offers the worst value with calls from France to the UK charged at 90p
per minute. But since all of these cards are free to obtain, it's
certainly worth getting one at least for emergencies. You dial a free
number (make sure you have with you the relevant number for France),
your account number and then the number you wish to call. The drawback
is that the free number is often engaged and you have to dial a great
many digits. If you need to make many foreign calls from France,
several companies offer cheap-rated phone cards, such as the
bargain-basement store Tati who sell a €7.62 or €15.24 Intercall Carte Téléphone (tel 08.00.51.79.43) for calling
overseas which you can use in a public or private telephone; a
€7.62 card gives you, for example, 15 minutes to Australia, 32
minutes to Canada or the US and 49 minutes to the UK. These rates work
out much cheaper than using France Telecom from a public phone.
To avoid payment altogether, you can, of course, make a reverse charge or
collect call
- known in French as
téléphoner en PCV
- by contacting the international operator. You can also do this through the operator in the UK, by dialling the
Home Direct number tel 08.00.89.00.33; to get an English-speaking
operator for North America, dial 00.00.11.
Some British
mobile phones , as long
as they're digital, will work in France. Getting a mobile phone in
France is - in principle - simply a matter of visiting a phone boutique
(for instance, a France Telecom store) with identification, proof of
address and proof of ability to pay. This involves setting up a French
bank account, which will entitle you to the bona fide
certificate known as an RIB (
Relève d'Identité Bancaire
); to obtain this you will need to provide a copy of a utility bill
with your name on it, not necessarily a problem since banks are
prepared to accept foreign utility bills.
Faxes
can be sent from all main post offices and many photocopy stores: the official French word is
télécopie
, but people use the word fax. A typical rate for sending a fax within
France is €3.81 for the first and €0.92 for subsequent pages.
Many French phone subscribers have
Minitel
, a dinosaurial online computer that's been around since the early
1980s, which allows access through the phone lines to directories,
databases, chat lines, etc. You will also find it in post offices. Most
organizations, from sports federations to government institutions to
gay groups, have a code consisting of numbers and letters, which you
can call up for information, to leave messages, make reservations, etc.
You dial the number on the phone, wait for a fax-type tone, then type
the letters on the keyboard, and finally press Connexion Fin
(the same key ends the connection). If you're at all computer-literate and can understand basic keyboard terms in French (
retour
- return,
envoi
- enter, etc), you shouldn't find them hard to use. Be warned that most
services cost more than phone rates. Directory enquiries (tel 12) are
free.
News Papers and Magazines
English-language newspapers
, such as the
European
, the
Washington Post, New York Times
and the
International Herald Tribune
, are on sale the same day in Paris, and in most large cities and resorts the day after publication. Of the
French daily papers
,
Le Monde
is the most intellectual; it is widely respected, but somewhat austere,
making no concessions to such frivolities as photographs. Libération , founded by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1960s, is
moderately justify-wing, independent and more colloquial, with good, if
choosy, coverage, while rigorous justify-wing criticism of the French
government comes from L'Humanité
, the Communist Party paper. The other nationals are all firmly right-wing in their politics:
Le Figaro
is the most respected. The top-selling national is
L'Équipe
, which is dedicated to sports coverage, while
Paris-Turf
focuses on horse-racing. The widest circulations are enjoyed by the
regional dailies
. The most important of these is the Rennes-based
Ouest-France
- though for travellers, this, like the rest of the regionals, is mainly of interest for its listings.
Weeklies
of the
Newsweek/Time
model include the wide-ranging and socialist-inclined
Le Nouvel Observateur
, its right-wing counterpoint
L'Express
and the boringly centrist
L'Évenement de Jeudi
and the newcomer with a bite,
Marianne
. The best investigative journalism is to be found in the weekly satirical paper
Le Canard Enchainé. Charlie Hebdo
is a sort of
Private Eye
or
Spy Magazine
equivalent. There is also
Paris-Match
for gossip about stars and the royal families.
Monthlies
include the young and trendy - and cheap -
Nova
, which has excellent listings of cultural events, and
Actue!
, which is good for current events. There are, of course, the French versions of
Vogue, Elle
(weekly) and
Marie-Claire
, and the relentlessly urban
Biba
, for women's fashion and lifestyle.
Moral
censorship
of the press is rare. On the newsstands you'll find pornography of
every shade, as well as covers featuring drugs, sex, blasphemy and
bizarre forms of grossness alongside knitting patterns and DIY. You'll
also find French comics
(
bandes dessinées ), which often
indulge such adult interests: wildly and wonderfully illustrated, they
are considered to be quite an artform and whole museums are devoted to
them.
Some of the huge numbers of homeless people in France (
les sans-logement
) make a bit of money by selling magazines on the streets which combine
culture, humour and self-help with social and political issues. Costing
€1.53, the most well-known of these is L'Itinérant.
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