You can make domestic and international phone calls from any telephone box (cabine) and can also receive calls – you'll find the number in the top right-hand corner of the information panel. A phone card (télécarte), issued in 50 and 120 units (€7.40 and €14.75 respectively), is essential, since coin boxes are being phased out; cards are available from tabacs and newsagents as well as post 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 coins of 10, 20 and 50 cents and €1.France Télécom's rates and charging structures are not only horribly complicated but change frequently – fortunately, in the downward direction on the whole. At the time of writing, peak-rate local calls from public phones were charged at around €0.30 for four minutes; long-distance calls within France cost up to roughly €1.20 for four minutes depending on the distance. You'll pay less when calling from a private phone and usually more from a hotel one. Off-peak rates (between 30 and 50 percent cheaper depending on whether you're calling from a public or private phone) apply on weekdays between 7pm and 8am and all day Saturday and Sunday. For calls within France – local or long-distance – simply dial all ten digits of the number. Numbers beginning with tel 08.00 are free-dial numbers; those beginning tel 08.10 are charged as a local call; anything else beginning tel 08 is premium-rated (typically charged at €0.34 per minute). Numbers starting with tel 06 are mobile and therefore also expensive. When phoning abroad, cheap rates (a reduction of between 20 and 47 percent depending on the country and whether you're calling from a public or private phone) apply on weekdays between 7pm and 8am and all day Saturday and Sunday. At the time of writing it costs €0.22 for a one-minute call to the UK (Royaume-Uni) from a public phone at peak rates; €0.22 to the USA (États-Unis) and Canada; and €0.48 to Australia and New Zealand. One of the most convenient ways of making international calls from France is via a telephone charge card from your phone company back home. Using a PIN number, you can make calls from most hotel, public and private phones that will be charged to your account. Since most major charge cards are free to obtain, it's certainly worth getting one at least for emergencies (check first that France is covered), but bear in mind that the rates per minute of these cards are many times higher than the cost of calling from a public phone. Another option is one of the pre-paid phone cards (cartes à codes) on sale at tabacs and newsagents which you can use with a public or private telephone. The €7.50 "Carte Universelle" marketed by Tiscali (tel 08.00.51.79.43), for example, gives you roughly 20 minutes to the UK, 30 minutes to the USA or Canada, 17 minutes to Australia and 11 minutes to New Zealand. However, these rates work out more expensive than calling off-peak from a France Telecom 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.
Pages in section ‘Telephones’: Calling home from France, Calling France from abroad, Useful telephone numbers, Mobile phones.
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