Martin963

Yes, I can see it's a casse-tête for you. As I say, I'd just be very wary of anything with the Nordnet name in it, of course they may have turned over a new leaf, but..... When we were in 24 we had the same problem as you, ie our village was not scheduled for fibre (as far as I know they still haven't got it). Hence we went down the 4G mains-router boulevard (in fact we pioneered it locally, and by the time we left I'd advised/installed it in a dozen French foyers (some friends, some via word of mouth from friends to their friends I'd never met!). We found the SOSH offres quite good enough (as they ride on Orange's network the coverage was the best overall) but we also used SFR which in our case had a weaker signal but greater allowance. For €20 odd and only monthly contract it worked very well in a dedicated 4G mains router. I'm no particular fan of Musk, but I wish him well in this particular instance. as anyone who throws sand at the French and the EU regulations gets my support.

Mon cher Harnser, it's clear you don't know this bit of Devon (and a large surrounding area). EVERYTHING is on poles here too, in fact more so than in 24 where we had our house for twenty years, during which time EDF/Enedis buried most of the local 3 phase distribution - none of our low tension stuff is buried. We too have falling trees and outages, and lorries that take out the phone lines/fibre connection, although my generator admittedly has been put to one side in the last two years as we now have a Tesla house-battery, but I am indeed aware of the sort of problems you face, as we face them here too. And no 5G before you ask, France is miles ahead with 5G coverage. Like you I would find financial operations difficult after perhaps two weeks, but a few days? I'm not familiar with email card transaction, but our basic bills would still be paid internet or no internet. I can see though that if your mobile signal went down 2 weeks before the storm then it did make life extremely difficult, was this weather related or just the most appalling concatenation of technical failure? We had a lot of trees round us in 24, and indeed do here in Devon. The main problem though is finding a path for the satellite signals to come through, particularly as I need the arc from 28E through to 5W. Like you I don't know how well Starlink performs with obstructions, friends near here have it as they don't have the same fibre connection that most of us have, and I know that they were muttering that they needed to find a better position for the dish as the house was partially obstructing their signal. That said they were getting speeds of 70 Mbps by just plonking their Starlink dish on the ground. And here in Britain it's £75 a month, whereas in France you can I believe get it for €49. How can they justify such a difference? I'll try and find out how our friends are getting on and what sort of installation they have.

Of course if it's genuinely a new and better service from a new satellite then it might be worth trying. But over the years of reading nordnet reviews I'd be very careful about using them, I don't know if it's still the case but for ages there was a clear pattern that new customers got an excellent service for the first three months (which was the period where you could wriggle out) and then the speeds would collapse, leaving you locked into a contract that had another 21 months to run. Is the internet really that important? Are storms on this scale going to happen so frequently that your life is going to be constantly and completely disrupted? I must admit that *some* backup is comforting, here in Devon we have a couple of 4G routers, and when the fibre to our village was cut off by a lorry (that was too high and which stripped the fibre from the poles) we were glad to have an alternative, as it took BT nearly two weeks to repair things (not their fault, the road had to be closed and it's an A road). A 4G (or 5G) router is far more reliable than tethering to a phone, although of course if the base station is deprived of power it's not going to function.

Interesting - I checked the French price and as you say €40 a month which is very competitive. Put my address in in Britain and it's still £75 a month. Quelle arnaque!

Interesting that it was used dans la langue de Shakespeare as well, thanks for that. As I said, it just wasn't a phrase I'd heard in use on French news reports until this summer, maybe the French have borrowed it back!

Actually I think it was the Delphine Jubillar case where I first started noticing that they kept having to add that her companion was "innocent until proven otherwise".

Used to be called "under-tow" in my young days, on holiday in Dorset as a child. But I don't remember until this year or last the phenomenon being so widely and universally called "baïnes" on French TV reports. Another new phrase on TV reports this year seems to be "sur le quivive" with regard to the pompiers and the forest fires, again in more than 24 years of daily watching of French TV news I don't remember that phrase cropping up. (And another thing, French TV have suddenly started making a point of ending reports on suspected criminals with the reminder that they are innocent until proven guilty. My guess is that someone somewhere high up made a formal complaint about the way hitherto French TV reports could sully the name of a suspect with no stated presumption of innocence). I digress.......

Also annoying (at least to me) was the BBC Radio capitulating - in the early 1990s - on the question of which way faders should fade, trashing decades of BBC exceptionalism, (of which I was proud). Oh well, keep polishing those double enders!

Why make it so "ciblé"? Why not allow an option to look at the national picture? Why restrict an app so tightly? Why should the app be entitled to check my geoloaction, some people (although I'm not that bothered about it) don't want snooping of this sort?

Frustratingly - and perhaps typical of "the French attitude" - I finally got it (the app) to admit (after several attempts) that I am not entitled to download or use the app as I am not resident in France. In other words it's geo-blocked. I do honestly wonder what goes on in the heads of some of these people...... And it's a stupid stupid restriction as I can still look at the info on the RTE website, it's just less easy to access quickly. I was amused to see that traffic lights won't be exempted from power-cuts in France, that should be good for a laugh as a spectator sport..... I might add that even on this very cold morning here in Britain (-5 deg C in Devon) we're still exporting power to France to keep their lights on.......

I expect Hidalgo is planning at this moment how to tax the poor little beasts......

Sadly it seems that Boursorama only offer bank accounts for people abroad provided they are French: ""La sélection d'un pays de résidence autre que France est réservée aux ressortissants français à l'étranger."" (I'd got some way through the process before it came up with that message, it's not clear when you start the sign up process).

Just answered my own question - the application form seems to allow one to choose Royaume Uni. I shall investigate further - thanks for the tip off NormanH.

But does Boursourama allow people who no longer have a French address to open an account?

Truly awful, there are some sick people around. Watching French TV though one sees more and more incidents of this sort where Mayors are attacked, often in public places with apparently no concern or worry on the part of the perpetrator about being witnessed or even filmed. One gets the impression that the increase in hassle - from low level insults and incivilités right through to being <<grièvement blessé>> is putting a lot of current Mayors off seeking re-election when the time comes. One can't blame them.