dave21478

Fibre is apparently online in the nearby town. Slower than the old ADSL. You couldnt make this sh1t up.

I seem to have got this working reliably now too. Back on page 1 I was using an old smartphone sellotaped to the lounge window as a mobile hotspot with my sosh contract. while this worked fine, the phone was getting alarmingly hot and starting to get unreliable so I bit the bullet and bought a 3G/4G modem from amazon. its a TPLink brand and cost a hundred sheckels. The sosh card went straight in (there are sim card size adaptors included with the modem - it uses a full size sim and mine was a small one for the old phone) and once the pin number was entered it started working pretty much straight away. In the lounge it was giving similar speeds to the old phone....4-5mb down, approx 1 up. I spent an afternoon wandering around the house with it on an extension lead to find the best signal. This is a minor gripe....it has 4 leds that light up to show signal strength and even logging into the modem and checking the signal strength it only gives 4 divisions of 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent signal, but internet speed can vary greatly depending on the modem location even with "full" signal indicated. Best result was unsurprisingly in the loft next the the wee gable window that faces towards the nearest orange tower. I now get a consistant 8-10mb down and 2-3 up, the variance I assume depends on network load. It has been as high as 12 down in the small hours of the night. I ran a cable to it for power and fitted it into an old ice-cream tub with the two aerials poking out so keep the dust and spider out and stop loires pi55ing on it. I have a 40gb limit per month for 24 euros from Sosh, and so far its a little touch-and-go. I currently have 4gb left and it wont reset for another 6 days. I am waiting to see what is happening with the landline/adsl here. Frankly I think I will cancel it and buy a second Sosh card and swap over half-way through the month. This will give 80gb, which should be more than enough for under 50 sheets a month, which is what I am paying now. No more landline though but that doesnt bother me. The fart-sniffers at Orange have been digging around the area putting in patches on their already patched lines after several complaints from the commune but to no avail, its still 0.8mb down for me at best. Fibre is supposedly coming to the next village....well, it was supposed to be here at the start of last summer, then at the end of summer, then at the end of the year, now....who knows. Anyway, I will hang onto the ADSL line until fibre happens and see if it makes a difference. I think I might be too far from the exchange for a real improvement, as its just fibre to the exchange then their janky old copper to everyones houses. Looking at various websites giving mast location, they seem to be split about half and half as to whether my nearest is 4G or not. Its not, but I wonder if it will be upgraded soon - that should give me really fast speeds.

I am a bit of a technotard when it comes to this, so stand to be corrected, but as I see it, tethering is using the USB charging lead to connect the phone to the laptop. This means the phone uses its 3G or 4G signal to connect to the internet and share that connection with the computer. What I have just discovered seems to be called a wifi hotspot, which is the same principal but without the wire. The phone broadcasts its own wifi signal which the laptop connects to as it would the wifi from a livebox. Why this is faster than tethering, I have no idea....perhaps the limit is the USB data transfer rate? I have a Wiko Rainbow Up, but most Android phones should be similar. Hit "Settings", "More", "Tethering and Hotspot". You can then turn on USB tethering if the lead is connected. or turn on the hotspot. You will need to set up the hotspot, where you can define a password to prevent others accessing your phones broadcast. You will need to enter this password on the laptop so it will connect. EDIT - bluetooth tethering is also on that options list, but my laptop doesnt have a blutooth thing, so I cant comment on that. Just to add more confusion regarding speeds....I always use the speedtest.net website for comparisons, and while I am getting a consistant 4mb download speed on the laptop via the phone hotspot, if I just use the phone itself (still taped the the window, no other changes) and use Chrome on the phone to access the speedtest site, it give a slower connection.....To be honest, Its all just black magic weirdness beyond my comprehension. Wifi hotspot mode seems to flatten the battery in the phone pretty quickly, so I have it on its charge lead....still sellotaped to the lounge window to get a decent signal. One day I might get round to making a proper holder for it. Which means I probably wont.

Dammit, why does nobody tell me these things? I have been using my phone connected to the laptop by USB and switching on "tethering" to connect via my mobile contract and it gets a reasonably solid 1.5mb, sometimes 2; While fiddling with the phone I found out it can be used as a wifi transmitter...ie it connects via my mobile contract and re-broadcasts via wifi which the laptop connects to instead of USB. For reasons unknown this is literally twice as fast...I now get a solid 4mb.

[quote user="Chancer"] Can I send you a car question by PM? [/quote] Yeah, dont hesitate.

Thats the offer I tried from Free, but didnt get a good enough signal. Depends on the phone I suppose, mine has a wee 3G or 4G icon next to the signal strength bars depending on what its receiving. If you log into your espace perso on the Free website, it tells you how much of 4G and 3G has been consumed. There are roughly 1000 megabytes in a gigabyte, so 50Mo is a drop in the ocean.

Its all a load of bollox. I sacked off the Free 4G sim card as it wouldnt get any kind of decent 4G signal, and if it reverts to a 3G connection the offer is terrible (19.99 per month for 3gb) I am back to the mobile phone taped to the lounge window and my Sosh 3G contract and I guess its going to stay that way until they install fibre/hell freezes over. Whichever comes first. Probably hell freezing. The website I linked to earlier with the map of transmitters suggests there is an SFR 4G antenna somewhere in the local village only 7km away. I dont know how accurate that is as I have no idea where the mast might be - its a tiny wee town. I need to find someone who has an SFR mobile and see if it gets a signal in my house.

Could you tell me what model of router you have ordered? I have found this site.... https://www.antennesmobiles.fr/ ...which you can use to find your nearest mast. Surprisingly there is a 4G antenna operated by SFR only 6km away from me. Looks like I need to look into that. Just my luck to find that AFTER I signed up to the wrong operator.

I am trying to get this to work right now and its all a MASSIVE pain in the scrote. I have a sosh ADSL landline setup which I think might actually be powered by smoke signals. 0.5mb down, 0.01 up internet is a good day. Its a complete farce and it infuriates me to the point of apocalyptic rage. Yes, I get it....I live in the middle of nowhere and the areas landline infrastructure is completely ruined and never going to be fixed, so I accept that internet will be slow, but why in the name of the Gods I dont believe in should I have to pay the same price for this miserable service as the folk living in town and getting at least 20 times faster speeds? In fact, I believe I pay MORE than them due to some "degroupage" system which translates as "because FCK YOU, thats why". Anyway, my mobile is also via sosh and I get 40gb of data per month. A while ago I discovered mobile tethering, where I connect via the USB to my laptop, turn on tethering in the phone settings and I get internet via the mobile. If I use Scotch tape to stick the phone to the lounge window I get a 3G signal. This gives the heady speeds on average of approx 1.7mb down and 0.8mb up. Its quite variable though and I have seen it as high as 3mb down very early in the morning. Its dependant on weather and load on the local cell network. It has also been as slow as the ADSL at times. The talked about 40-odd mb speeds is the 3G networks theoretical maximum under perfect conditions - ie never. ever. Happy enough with this, I continued for several weeks, although it was costing me a lot in Scotch tape to keep sticking the phone to the window and unsticking it when I want to go somewhere, so I decided to get another phone and look at maybe a different offer. While fiddling with the telephone settings I discovered I could make it scan for all networks and it said it was getting a Free 4G signal. 4G! wow. So I signed up to a Free sim card which arrived today. Guess what. no, go on....guess.... Yeah, 4G my hoop. It gets a decent 3G signal, but only gets 4G for a fleeting instant if I force the phone to use it, and then reverts back to 3G. During a brief 4G connection I got a dowload speed of 7mb; Hot damn, if I could get that to work reliably I would be a happy bunny. So tomorrows task is to get up the ladder and see if there is a better 4G signal to be had higher up, and if so I need to find a 4G receiver with an external aerial that I can mount on the roof. Otherwise, the Free sim will get sent back and I will cancel the offer - no point in keeping it if it doesnt work here. And I am typing this now via the ADSL because in all the fiddling and swapping SIM cards back and forth in the phone it is now flatly refusing to make any data connection at all with either card at any speed.

it was a joke, but never mind.

Great - thats something else I am going to have to start stock-piling, next to my creosote, incandescent light bulbs and hoovers over 1600watts. Thanks a bunch, EU.

I started a similar thread a while back, and as pickles mentioned above, there are HUGE amounts of people who dont register. A quick stroll down a row of carcassonne airport carpark will turn up something like a third of the cars there appearing to be illegal. I think the chances are that you will probably get away with it indefinately. But, the day you have an accident you will have problems with your insurance, and if that accident is severe, ie a death is involved, you will find yourself up shit creek without a boat, never mind the paddle.

They are not nearly as prevelant as in UK, and I dont know of any in the area, sadly. I have a little project in mind that would really require one, but since I cant find anythig locally, its all on hold for the forseeable future. Since engine swaps are not legal ( except in a few cases) and most serious engine tuning is frowned upon by insurers, the entire french car modifying scene is geared more towards looks and sounds, hence the "tuning" magazines being filled with garishly coloured fibreglass monstrosities usually based on low spec diesel models.

Quelle Surprise, they wont honour the zero quote. Cheapest they will do is about €170 for the year. When I talked about the franchise (excess) being more than the premium, I assumed (hoped) they were doing some kind of deal that i get free third party cover untill (if) i ever have an accident, then I pay the higher excess claim. Unsurprisingly, this isnt the case. "cetait une erreur monseur"

Yes, I assumed it was something like that. I have seen them with "GPL" underneath, which I ssumed to ban gas converted cars too. The only problem is that I have seen these at tunnel entranes on motorway/dual carriageway sections where you cant exactly turn round and find another route!