You can make international phone calls from any telephone box (cabine) and receive calls where there's a blue logo of a ringing bell. You'll need to buy a phone card (télécarte; 50-unit card for €7.40 or 120-units for €14.75) as coin boxes have been almost phased out (but see below). You can also buy a card with a PIN number (une carte à code), available for €7.50 or €15 from tabacs or newsagents, which can be used with a public or private telephone; just dial the toll-free number provided, followed by your PIN number (given on the card) and then the subscriber number. Credit cards can also be used in many call boxes. Coin-only boxes do still exist in cafés, bars, hotel foyers and rural areas; they take 10, 20 and 50 cents and €1; put the money in after lifting up the receiver and before dialling. You can keep adding more coins once you are connected. However, remember to omit the initial 0 of the local area code from the subscriber's number.For calls within France – local or long-distance – dial all ten digits of the number. Paris and Île-de-France numbers start with tel 01. 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. Local calls are timed in France. Off-peak charges (for local, long-distance and international calls) apply on weekdays between 7pm and 8am, and all day Saturday and Sunday, as well as holidays. A convenient way of phoning home from abroad 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; enquire first though whether France is covered, and bear in mind that rates aren't necessarily cheaper than calling 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. This can be done through the operator in the UK, by dialling the Home Direct number tel 08.00.99.00.44 and asking for a "reverse charge call"; to get an English-speaking operator for North America, dial 08.00.99.00.11.
Pages in section ‘Phones’: Mobile phones, International dialling codes .
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