I am in France at the moment, and I have never (exaduration) seen so many feature phones... Getting a French SIM for data was an exercise in frustration even with a local helping me. I got a SIM from Bourgues Telecom by registering it to a friend's name and address. Mostly works but it is really really difficult to give them money (wtf) and they modify unencrypted HTML page image links: http://serverfault.com/questions/339780/who-what-is-http-1-1...

Sellers on second hand trading site leboncoin.com keep saying to use the phone and not email (I.e. I presume they don't have a smart phone and data connection).

One place I stayed at had been trying to get ADSL for two years, even though it was reasonably built up.

As a NZer that travels a lot, the internet infrastructure appears less than 1st world to me.

Where are you in France?

I've got unlimited call + sms + 4G data (limited bandwidth after 20Gb) for 20€/month, and 300Mb/s fibre connection for 35€/month. I have not seen similar rates in the UK/US.