Smaller bills and faster internet

So another project recently has been to reduce the mobile phone bills.

Thanks to Free (oh, I feel so GUILTY !) the pattern of mobile phone contracts has changed in France over the last year. Until recently you had two options :

1) Pay as you go: Phones cost lots, you pay as much as you use, free to stop at any time.

2) Contracts: Phones cost little, but you pay LOADS each month, and tied up for one or two years.

Since Free a new option has come in. You pay a smaller amount - 15 to 20 € a month - for a comprehensive phone service, but this does NOT include a mobile phone. If you need to buy a phone you buy one outright or by paying monthly, but this is a different additional cost. Also there is no engagement.

So we've been switching people around.

Gwilym has been on Free for some time, paying 15€ a month, using my old iPhone. When it finally yielded up the spirit we bought a Sony handset.

Catrin was on Virgin Mobile. We have moved her to Free, paying 2€ a month. Her option doesn't include mobile internet. She says if she had that she'd be on it all the time. She's been using a Wildfire for some time now.

Pat was on a contract with NRJMobile. She has moved to Bouygues B&You, using a second-hand Wildfire that she's very happy with following the death of her Motorola Defy.

The last person to be sorted out was me. I wanted to go onto B&You, too, but I hesitated... The answer came from a Bouygue telesales person who pointed out that if we changed our internet provider to Bouygues (sorry Free !) we could go to fibre-optique and I could go onto a lower price phone setup giving a better service and cheaper bills.

So the technician is coming to set it up on 22 January.

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