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Well each to their own.

Two of the (French) people I've been helping here are Free ADSL customers.   One has had a total of three months of working service over the last fifteen months.   The other has had no service since the beginning of August.   Free couldn't give a t*** about either of them.

But as you say,   different people have different experiences.

As to SFR Red mobile contracts,  you can go through the resiliation process simply on line.

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As an ADSL customer I have nothing but good to say about Free and it must be close to 10 years now, one time there was a line fault after F.T. worked on a boitier up the road, usual job creation, they fix one line and deliberately cut off a few others, it took maybe one day longer through Free than if I were a F.T. customer and its a big maybe, they can only notify FT after 24 hours of no service or problem.

 

Nothing but good things to say about the mobile phone service until I was forced into getting a smartphone, on 2G I was always connected to Orange, never once picked up a Free signal but I have learned from this thread that they dont have any! In any case how can you moan about something which costs absolutely nothing and which would have cost at least €40 a month before Free shook up the market?

 

I must get to the bottom of the lack of internet connectivity on the smartphone with the 2nd Free simcard, I have 2 Free 3G transmitters close by, one I can see line of sight, have a perfect signal for phone calls and texts, the indicator on the phone seems to have 3 or 4 bars out of 5 often with an H or an H+ yet the download speed is a paltry 200kb/s at best, I can drive for 40 kms visit the 2 biggest towns, drive right up to the transmitters and the phone will either not connect to the net at all or with only 40kb/s download speed, yet ALBOF and his kids can drive anywhere even in the depths of France and always connect to the net using FreeMobile.

 

Like ALBOF most of the Wi-Fi hotspots around here are Free and maybe that is what people are doing when they are out and about, I have to disconnect the public access to mine and hence cant use it myself elsewhere because cars were constantly stopping outside blocking the car park entrance to check their Fessbook or to see what rubbish yet another worthless celeb had Tweeted.

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I don't know where ALBOF is but certainly here the number of Free transmitters is very much smaller than the other three networks.

But I feel your pain Chancer,   and agree about worthless celebs;   I think your best bet is what I recommended earlier,  that is to try your card in someone else's phone,   and try their card in yours.

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Well I actually share your aversion to smartphones Chancer,   I've only obtained one in the last six weeks and it is used on wi-fi only,   but in the interests of your own technical depannage you're basically boxing yourself into a corner.  You won't try a 3G/4G router,  you won't try a different operator,   even sans engagement,  and you don't appear to want to seek out someone with a suitable phone.

In which case I can see no further point in any of us trying to help you, as in essence you have spent this thread complaining endlessly about your own situation but apparently taking great pleasure in shooting each of our suggestions down.

Perhaps this is what happens on what has over the last few years become something of a "red giant" forum.....  In any case,  for me the 4G router has been a complete game-changer,   and also means that our place no longer has the disadvantage of carrying the reputation of "snail's-pace internet" when the time to sell comes.

johnnyboy - any luck with your SFR card in the router?

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Martin Said :

"I don't know where ALBOF is but certainly here the number of Free transmitters is very much smaller than the other three networks"

I live in Tours, having just lived in Paris (for the third time) and lived in Lyon and other boring places.

Yeah, if you are Free (or the other operators) you are going to focus your business on cities because at the end of the day that is where everyone lives and the money is to be made.

I am not sure if I was Free that I would be that bothered about customers living in rural nowhere with carp infrastructure. In some respects you are flogging a dead horse.

It's business at the end of the day.

But you have found a solution which is good.
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Martin, I am really surprised at your posting, it really is out of character for you, at least the for very decent character that I thought you were.

 

You could not have misread the situation further had you tried to, and there are a couple out there who always do their best to do that, I had never considered you to be of the same ilk.

 

FYI I have not shot down anyones suggestions and would never take pleasure in doing so, its not a cse of refusing to follow anyones advice as of how important and pressing the problem is to me, it is neither, just another of the numerous problems that occur with an unwanted and forced change of technology.

 

I have 12mb/s internet access, Wi-Fi throughout the property from 2 routers and a repeater which give similar speeds, I have absolutely nothing to be gained at this point from having yet another complicated bit of kit that I dont understand and a 3rd mobile phone abonnement to run it, it would be nice to have a solution for next summer when there are lots of guests with multiple devices preventing me from accessing the internet to run my business but for the moment there are a hundred and one far more important things for me.

 

It would be nice to know why others can get internet at high speeds on their smartphones while out and about and I seemingly cannot but as there have only been 2 or 3 occasions in recent years when I realised that being able to connect with the net when out would have helped again its not up there amongst the priorities, its an intellectual exercise, when I saw a thread on this friendly forum talking somewhere close to the subject with informative helpfull people like yourself I naturally asked a couple of questions to be better informed and I thank you again for your responses, believe me I would never ask the same question on the other forum as there is someone there who relishes every opportunity to belittle me whenever they find any opening to do so.

 

You have misunderstood my situation, and misinterpreted my responses, once again I am very gratefull for your informative replies but am really surprised at your reaction, I can see that you are pleased that some neighbours have benefitted from a 4g router and a change of mobile service provider, i am pleased for them also but doing the same to please you would not bring me any benefits here at my home in France with 12mb ADSL and soon to be fibre optique, it may however help me in the UK if I can no longer use one neighbours log in détails for anothers BT Wi-Fi with Fon.

 

Knowledge is never wasted.

 

P.S. Re seeking out someone with a suitable phone, only one person visits me here and he has an old school phone just like me, I am not going to phone around everbody that I know asking them to come over to my place to dépanne me (your words) when I dont have a breakdown, i am patient and when someone is here who isn't with Free, and everybody that I know is, then I will ask them to see what signal and speed they are getting  and to try their sim in my phone, it will take time, a commodity that I have.

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Chancer, I am in somewhat the same boat as you, I actually asked Martin a question a few pages back.

I am off to France this Sunday and have purchased this on Ebay

 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UNLOCKED-ZTE-MF910-150MBPS-4G-LTE-HOTSPOT-MOBILE-BROADBAND-ROUTER-WIFI-WI-FI-o2 /172649960574?hash=item2832bd547e:g:ZzwAAOSww5NZA4e8

 I will experiment with this over the next month to see what happens. Maybe get one of these and give it a try, its not expensive.  But sometimes getting the right gear actually makes it easier. Maybe the phone is faulty?

Good luck mate.

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Hi all, just quick update on the router as requested by Martin. The SFR card simply will not work, in that it does not connect to the network whatever I try. I do however have my son- in law arriving tomorrow evening, who has a degree in computer science. I live in hopes!!

The sim works perfectly in my phone and with tethering is phenomenal.

The Reglo sim worked in the router, but due to a comedy of errors ran out of limits. So the problem I think is that the sfr sim is locked to prevent the router option. That is why I asked about the SOSH card, as reading through the text it seems to offer the router option in there.

Chancer and ALBF, I too have been with Free for some years now and agree their service has been good (including website), but unfortunately for those of us more in the Sticks, there is just no 4G coverage. Yes I can see that is purely a business decision on their part, just does not help Martin and I , plus others like us! Hence the investigation of other means of communication, as Martin pointed out, the abonnement sans engagement can be cancelled anytime.

Since our repeated complaints, Orange.fr have left the voltage turned up on the lines to our hamlet and we can currently see 2.7 Mbps download still. Whether this will change or not, we are keeping a close eye on it.

Will try and give more info as and when peeps.

Johnnyboy.

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I am out in the sticks and have no 4g coverage from Free, there is Orange 4G but I think all the time I can get a 3G signal from Free it wont connect to it even though it will allow me to register with it (or whatever the term was) whereas it wont allow me to register with the Bouygues or SFR antenne, maybe if I could unregister the two Free 3g antennes it might work but I think the sharing of the Orange network is solely to fill in dead spots in the phone network, not for internet access.

 

Where my situation differs from the rest of us is that I have degroupée ADSL at 12mb so do not have the connectivity and speed problems that makes 4G such a great result for you all, for me it would be just a standby and its a head-scratcher why when I connect it is so slow and why I cannot connect most of the time out and about, it is not a desperate problem that I am seeking resolution to, were it to be, were I in the same boat as the others I could perhaps understand Martins frustration with me.

 

Another anomoly, the phone wont connect for me when I have tried outside of the house (just for trail, I had no need of the internet on the move) yet when i look at the data consumption on the Free sim, not the wifi I find that it has used what seems to me to be an enormous amount of background data compared to the tiny bit i used when I did connect, so clearly its connecting without me knowing it and consuming my data allowance uploading mise a jours for stuff that I dont want and cannot remove like weather.

 

Its either a phone or user problem, most likely to be the latter.

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@ Chancer - thanks for clarifying,   I hadn't appreciated (which may well be my fault for not reading properly) that you had such a good ADSL connection (something that I of course would have given my eye-teeth for until recently).

Anyway,   I owe you an apology given that I appear to have mis-interpreted the "mood" of your posts.   Sorry.

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@ Chancer

On holiday in the summer we stopped in rural Bourgogne for a week. I was cursing and swearing when we arrived because the phone was slow using the internet and I could not do this that and the other.

I go in the house and my 10 year old was using her phone (exactly the same phone as mine), same forfait and she was watching you tube videos. ???? I said how do you do that ?

I share your pain Chancer. LOL
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Martin, no problem at all.

 

Albof, I have zero knowledge or competence in this subject so am not able to decide what I am told is rubbish or otherwise, I rely on the provenance of the person, someone whos competence I trust said that when several devices are sharing bandwidth priority is given to video so your daughter may be preventing you from doing what you want.

 

Certainly when I have guests watching films or videos that is when my speed slows to next to nothing, I unplug the guest router and all is well, do it a few times and they stop trying. I also have to do it when shouty Australian grannies Skype their offspring with the Windows wide open.

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Just a quick report on the newly arrived

Huawei B315s-22 4G LTE/WiFi

With the Sosh card I was delighted to be able to get a reasonable 4G signal at the house (for SFR on the existing router it's installed up in a barn attic at some distance from the house,  as the SFR signal here is weaker than that of Orange/Sosh).   The Huawei doesn't  come with external aerials so that was a pleasant surprise.

The phone (which you plug in via an RJ11 and allows you to use the SIM card for telephoning) works faultlessly,  and in fact when you pick up the phone there's even conventional French dialling tone there.   Our cordless phones work fine on it.

However.....

The PIN management is different to the TP link modem,   in that the Huawei encourages you (defaults in fact) to switching the SIM card PIN off (or de-activating it).    The SOSH card - taken out of the Huawei and put back in a phone) is now behaving erratically in our Nokia 2G mobile phone,   although it hooks up with the Orange network it rarely allows one to make a call,  one dials,  waits,  and then there are three little pips and the phone drops back to idle.  

So I reactivated the PIN system for the Sosh card,  but still have an unreliable performance in the Nokia.   However,  in an even older Nokia there appears to be no problem,  it's as though one Nokia has taken agin the SOSH card since it's been in the Huawei.

Turning to SFR,  I tried that in the Huawei.   In spite of the router's unfavourable situation in the house as far as SFR coverage is concerned,  it does produce a weak but stable 4G signal,   albeit running at only 8 Mbps.   However,  the phone part simply refuses to work,  I cannot make calls via the Huawei whilst the SFR card is there.

So a mixed report,  and certainly given the problems that MAY have been engendered on the SOSH card,   and the fact the phone bit doesn't work with SFR,   I have to say that maybe this isn't the box for use in France.....   However,  in our case the SOSH/Huawei combination works so we now have TWO relatively fast 4G internet signals simultaneously in the house,  and if someone rings us we don't have to hunt for the mobile.

And @ johnnyboy,   the fact that SFR phoning doesn't work on a Huawei does make me wonder whether your problem IS one simply of incompatibility.

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Some interesting info there Martin, I seem to have hit a 2G download limit with the SFR, so no longer connecting to internet. Was thinking of the SOSH card to try in the router, in the blurb it says 20Go mobile internet (€19.99 deal) am I going to hit a similar limit on that or not I wonder?

SIL has not really had chance to investigate so far, as his parents - in law were here too and things have been quite hectic!

Fingers crossed to have something to report at some stage:)

Johnnyboy

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I've forgotten johnnyboy - what is your SFR monthly limit?

Using the modem and with the two of us doing moderate browsing (particularly in this awful miserable weather) we get through about 1 GB per day,  so the 100 GB monthly is more than comfortable.   However,  we don't do much video watching,  and that does use data up....

As to the SOSH card in the Nokia phone problem,   I was minded suddenly to try googling "Nokia 100 hard reset" - not that I thought that a piece of kit so simple could even have the option of a hard reset.

However,  I did a factory reset and the problem with the SOSH card has gone away - thank goodness.    It did seem to be the case that whatever had gone wrong with the combination rendered the phone much less sensitive to the 2G signal,  it was noticeable that in a weak area (near the house) almost all the calls failed,   whereas climbing the hill to an area of better reception meant that 1 in 3 calls succeeded.   I've got some technical chums on the case trying to work out what happened.....

I originally had the 20 Euro Sosh card offer,   but increased it to the 25 Euro one, partly to get 40 GB per month instead of 20 GB,  also because at 25 Euro per month you get European land line (not mobiles) calls from France thrown in.

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Thanks Martin, all good info. I am currently on the €19.99 SFR forfait, which gives just 2 Go of download apparently.( I've just hit the buffers!) The SOSH deal specifically states that you can use it for tethering in order to get VOIP/skype etc though. Will order one soonest!!

Your info ref the telephone was interesting and I'll get the €25.00 forfait I think.

Thanks again and will post as soon as I have some more info.

Johnnyboy.

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OK,  keep me posted.

A correction for yesterday's information;    for no reason I can explain I tried the SFR card a second time in the Huawei,   and this time the phone facility worked perfectly.  

Which doesn't leave us any nearer knowing why your (johnnyboy) SFR card doesn't like the router you've got.

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Yes I did (initiate in a phone first,  in my case a Nokia 100,  just to check that it could make calls OK).     

You do have to initiate the Sosh card,   I think I did it by ringing 0800 100 740 (see the leaflet) but I can't remember what the actual stages were,  maybe they gave me a code to enter in the phone.....

But it wasn't difficult.   Sorry I can't remember the details....

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  • 3 months later...
Hi All, just an update on the current situation. Its been a while since I last posted on this subject due to various reasons.

The main being unable to activate the SOSH sim cards on the router, after contacting them online I was sent a new sim card because they could not get the old one to register. Got the new one and lo and behold, the same situation!!

Went through the same routine and they ended up sending me yet another sim card, which finally worked. (Hooray)

Reception was pretty patchy, so had to get an external aerial and extension lead, which has improved the whole deaal.

So now where are we, well, the figures on average are as follows:

Ping: 32ms

Download: 15.87 Mbps

Upload: 8.58 Mbps

It does drop lower at peak times of course, but can equally be a lot higher at off peak.

All in all, much better than the orange.fr livebox at 1.89Mbps and 0.76Mbps as about average times, taken just after the SOSH times.

Still not sure if the 40Gb is enough for a whole month as yet, as I have not had a full months usage to date!!!!

Will post again as and when I have more info.

Best regards,

Johnnyboy.

PS have to say the online staff were very helpful and concerned about my situation and did all they could to rectify it.

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So how much a month is the contract for the 40Go ?

 

What network does it use? I hope that you are going to say Orange because they have a good 4g signal here, I am just outside of the "all I can eat" reception with Free and it switches to Orange who bride the download to 20kb/s which is useless, my cutomers with Orange carte sims get 100Mo/s on 4G [:-))]

 

Do Sosh do PAYG mobile data sim?

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Hi Chancer, yes it uses the orange network here. The signal strength is usually 3bars, which is just fine apparently as sometimes with a higher strength signal, you may encounter some problems.

As for the PAYG, I've just looked at their site and cannot see anything other than €19.99 for 20Gb or €24.99 for 40Gb.

Hope that helps,

Johnnyboy.

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Yes thanks, I did the same and found the same.

 

I currently have a Free €20/15 per month sim for €1 per month for a year just to get used to a smartphone while retaining my 2004 Nokia with my zero cost Free sim for use as a phone, I have a tiny bit of data included in the free Free one but have found its of no use where I live so I will not be retaining it at the end of the 1st year.

 

At least i know now for a little bit more than it would have cost had it worked I could have a really fast Orange connection through Sosh, if the price falls I might get one, it would be good to have a standby for if the ADSL fails or for when I have a lot of customers gobbling up the connection.

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I also have the zero cost Free one for an old-fashioned mobile phone, but thought of  asking to change to the 15.99 one which I see says has unlimited 4G to use with a tablette that takes sim cards.

Are you saying that the Free one can't access 4G?

(genuine question, as I know nothing about smartphones and tabletes although I like you have had Free for years for my PC Internet)

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