Rachel,

This is a tricky question. I am in the same situation and am using a French phone from Orange. The first thing you could do is to test the coverage of French operators at your workplace. It is possible, though not likely, that a French network extends to your workplace, especially if you are close to the border. If this is the case, go for that operator and force your phone to always stay with that operator. If this is not the case, take the same operator your husband has (if he phones you from a mobile), let  it automatically choose the operator and remember to turn OFF data roaming.

Another option could be to get a phone with two SIM-cards one for France and one for Switzerland. I know that these exist but do not have any knowledge of their use in this region.

Best of luck

Hi Rachel

We live full time in France [are retired] but both have a Yallo mobile phone coverage. Super! Never any problems, cheap rates, very easy to top up. Recommended!

I had Yallo for two years and it had a pretty good coverage in France, once I was able to use it up in Gex. However, as your husband will have a French phone he would always have to make int'l calls to reach you. No problem if you don't have to pay the bills but otherwise can add up.

Try www.transatel.fr

Rachel, the french operators seem to provide better coverage in GVA than the Swiss operators provide in France.  It's probably the geography since GVA is surrounded by France in three directions.  Perhaps take hubby's phone to work one day and see how it works.

There are also dual-SIM phones on the market.  You could be a French and a Swiss subscriber with the same phone.

> the french operators seem to provide better coverage in GVA than the Swiss operators provide in France.

True, it's mainly because French operators are allowed to broadcast their signal at a higher power than Swiss operators.

If your cell phone is set to automatically select the service provider, it might periodically hook up to a French one even in the middle of Geneva. 

Tell me about it.  Someone at my company (with an iPhone) accidently roamed onto a French network while in Switzerland and performed many GB of data transfer.  Upper mgmt discovered the invoice (for several thousand CHF in roaming charges) and immediately banned iPhones from the company network.

I keep my operator selection on "manual" at all times.  Spending one minute to select a new carrier when I visit France is easy enough.