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Tourists in France offered cheap WiFi deal

Oliver Gee
Oliver Gee - [email protected]
Tourists in France offered cheap WiFi deal
Want to share that selfie? Beware of the roaming costs. Photo: AFP

In a bid to battle expensive data roaming charges, France has teamed up with a local start-up to push a new product that allows tourists to connect to unlimited, high speed WiFi at a fraction of the cost.

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Imagine you've just taken the perfect selfie with the Eiffel Tower, but have no WiFi connection to share it online. That's the stuff of nightmares for many a tourist (believe it or not), who have to wait until they find somewhere offering WiFi before they can do anything with the picture. 
 
In fact, many travellers turn off their phone's roaming capabilities while on the road fearing any exorbitant hidden charges. 
 
But these charges could become a thing of the past thanks to Travel WiFi - a Paris-based start-up providing tourists with a small wireless modem that connects any WiFi enabled device to 3G/4G Internet. The device, which can be carried around in your pocket, has a six-hour battery life and gets reception all over Paris and across most of France.
 
The company has teamed up with Bouygues Telecom and is offering the product for €7.90 a day, or  €6 per day if you're staying a month or more. 
 
 
 
Jonathan Justman, the co-founder of Travel Wifi, said the team was looking forward to solving what many consider to be a costly problem. 
 
"Millions of passengers who have just arrived in France will see our service, and pretty much all of them need a solution to connect to Internet while abroad," he told The Local.  
 
One fan of the start-up is Francis Navarro, deputy director general of the regional tourism committee of Paris, who helped roll out 100 free modems for tourists arriving to the city this week. They've been given out at the Charles de Gaulle airport and the Galeries Lafayette. 
 
"At a time when visitors are becoming more and more connected, we're offering an easy connection," he told French newspaper Le Parisien.
 
"There's a real need for it because of the high prices of roaming packages abroad."
 
So how exactly does it work? Watch the video below to find out more. 

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