French Polynesia

 Post 5   from Trip Advisor's French Polynesia Forum:

 http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g294338-i867-k7365044-Vini_Data_SIM_card_Incoming_calls-French_Polynesia.html

May 27, 2014

Just returned from Tahiti and finally have the answers to my questions :-)







In short "NO" - you can not make calls or send SMS from a Vini prepaid data card. You get a number assigned but the number can not be called. You can receive SMS but that's not very useful as you can't reply via SMS.







So you will have to choose between prepaid data and prepaid voice or buy two SIMs and swap them around unless you have a dual SIM phone. It's pretty sad - I hope that Vini gets their act together and fixes this.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:12px;color:rgb(74,74,74);font-family:Arial,Tahoma,BitstreamVeraSans,sans-serif;line-height:18px;">SIM cards and data is expensive (XPF 2050 SIM, XPF 500 / 100 MB) and there is not a lot of 3G coverage especially on anchorages that are not near resorts. So it's mostly good for email and IM.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:12px;color:rgb(74,74,74);font-family:Arial,Tahoma,BitstreamVeraSans,sans-serif;line-height:18px;">The APN is "internet" without the quotes and there is no userid or password. The SIM does not autoconfigure the APN, you have to add it manually. You also have to SMS "Go" to 7010 to get the service started. Sending "Conso" to 7100 will give you your remaining balance in Megabytes. There is no low credit or out of credit notification the service simply stops. All a bit crude....

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:12px;color:rgb(74,74,74);font-family:Arial,Tahoma,BitstreamVeraSans,sans-serif;line-height:18px;">I got my SIM cards and recharge vouchers at a shop (Tahiti Phone) about 300 m east of the airport (main road towards the city), near the Bank of Tahiti. Make sure you have cash, they don't accept credit cards. They are not open Saturday afternoon or Sunday. They can cut micro and nano SIMs. There is also a OPT (post office), they sell SIM cards but only voice and they can't cut them to Micro or Nano.

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