Internet via 3G or 4G

[Chancer]

Its a long answer I'm afraid Norman.

 

If you are close to a Free 4g mast (and most are) = metropole/large town then you are laughing, speeds which you cannot imagine!

 

However the minute it switches to Orange on itinerance they slow you down to less than dial up speed, I get 20 kb/s, in an eare of overlapping signals = most places if the Orange signal is stronger than the Free one it will switch automatically to Orange despite the fact that a weaker Free 4g signal will give you 1000 times higher internet speed than the throttled Orange one.

 

Cross the border into any other country and the EU itinerance comes into play, my Free carte is superb in the UK but hopeless in troudeculdemondeland.

 

All of the data I have used in France has been on Speedtest, I can drive for hours trying to connect to the Free antennes that I know are there and it will stick with Orange, I can drive 50km to Arras, through y local town where there is a Free antenne and it sticks on Orange 3g and most of the time will not even connect, get to Arras, force the phone onto Free and get 100Mb/sec download, I can then drive all the way back and it will stay with Free as there are antennes on the route, weak signal but superb speed compared to Orange, then 100m from where I live the signal drops out and I am stuck with Orange.

 

Sometimes I can get a free connaction across the road but my problem is compounded by the fact that Orange have a 3g Femtocell in the Airbus factory opposite.

[NormanH]

Thanks for that , though it's not what I wanted to hear [:(]

[Chancer]

I am hoping that the commercial blackmail situation will resolve itself in the 9 months I have remaining on the €1 per month vente privée deal.

 

If another one comes up its a cheap way of trying it out and you can cancel at any time, like you I knew nothing about tablettes and Smartphones and I still will never use the smartar5e thing as a phone, something it is completely nul at, but being able to use it as a Wi-Fi hotspot in the UK was a revelation, I have never had such fast and bug free internet access, supposedly slower than my ADSL but in practice much faster.

[dave21478]

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.

[dave21478]

Fibre is apparently online in the nearby town.

Slower than the old ADSL. You couldnt make this sh1t up.

[Martin963]

Although - following being roundly abused in another part of this wretched wretched forum - I'd vowed not to post further,   I make an exception to say I'm glad you're sorted out now dave.   FWIW we ditched the landline in August and haven't looked back.   If you tell Orange/FT that you're selling up you may well avoid any cancellation charges,  either on ADSL or landline rental.

[NotAgain]

Just to say thanks to all the people who have contributed to this thread and made me get up off my backside and buy a Huawei B525s-23a 4G Router and a SOSH sim card, resulting in me now having reasonably fast and stable (so far) internet connection at almost half what I was paying before for a woefully poor satellite internet service.

Special thanks to my friend and near-neighbour Johnnyboy, who set up his SOSH equipped router in my attic to prove that I could get 4G here!!

The Huawei router is a revelation. Not only do I get 5 bars of 4G from our local mast without external antennae with the SOSH card but the router gives me better 2.4 GHz wireless than my old TP-Link router and a much better web interface. It''s been quite easy to share my printer via the USB port and, as has been posted here before, it's possible to plug a conventional phone into the RJ11 socket and make and receive free calls.

I haven't investigated all the possibilities yet but I'm very much looking forward to ditching my "bigblu" satellite broadband service when I've had another few days to make sure that I'm not dreaming this and it really is possible for me to get a usable internet connection here in rural France........

[suein56]

As you say .. sometimes the biggest step is taking the plunge and doing smthg for yourself.

Well done .. you and your 4G connection should be just fine.

I have recommended this very set-up to a couple of dissatisfied males but, so far they haven't dared take the first step.

[NotAgain]

Thanks for your encouragement, Sue. I consider myself as pretty IT savvy, but the big hole in my knowledge has been mobile phone technology - didn't even possess a smart phone until last year. Easier than I thought!

Iain

[Martin963]

Thanks CastAway.   As the bod who started this thread I'm glad that you've been able to take this route,  and well done to johnnyboy too.  

Since setting my own 4G up,  I've demonstrated the system in a dozen houses round here (almost all French) and all bar one have rushed out to buy the system and have been pathetically grateful to me ever since - oui!   The only place it didn't work properly was on very high ground not far from here,  my experience has shown that there are some places that have line-of-sight to too many towers,   and as a result there are frequency clashes.   This may be resolved over the next couple of years when the new 700 MHz 4G band is further pressed into service,   allowing transmitters to be re-allocated to the new band.

Anyway,  good to have the feedback!

[NotAgain]

Thanks, Martin, 4G certainly looks like changing my life. It's a confusing technology to get to grips with at first - we've just discovered the nearby visible mast that we've been at great pains to set up our routers in the best position for with our SOSH cards doesn't actually have Orange(!) despite what we were told - I'm obviously getting my 5 bars from somewhere else, but who cares, it's working!

[Martin963]

Well if you do want to get information about which operator uses which tower it's all findable on cartoradio.fr,  although it takes a little patience and detective work.   It can be useful in difficult areas, as it at least gives an idea of which side of a house is likely to be most favoured,  but as you say if you've got a full scale deflection it would only be of academic interest. 

Anyway,  for those of us without any prospect of fibre the ol' 4G is simply a fantastic and very welcome development!

[NotAgain]

Yes, it was the map that solved it for me - just didn't believe the information at first! Thanks again for starting this thread - I can't believe I've got rid of satellite at last.

[johnnyboy]

Well done Castaway, your map did the trick for me too.

Have now installed my equipment in the attic at the opposite end of the house to original position. (line of sight to nearest mast!! Which I was told by an orange technician was an orange 4G mast) Hmmmmmmm!

I am now getting a fairly constant 21Mbps, even saw nearly 30Mbps late on Saturday evening!

At times it can drop to 5 or 6Mbps, when there is lots of contention on system. Still miles better than the 150Kbps to 1.2Mbps at best on the orange live box.

When I spoke with the helpline, I got into quite an argument with the guy as he could/would not understand that paying €36.90 per month for a patchy service was not my idea of customer service. Tried to offer me a deal of both systems together, for €49.00 per month instead. At which point I lost it and told him exactly where he could stick it!!

Especially as there is a fault on the telephone line to our hamlet, which they cannot repair as it is under the autoroute.

Hey ho, see how we get on from here, with SOSH then.

Cheers,

Johnnyboy

[NotAgain]

Well done, Johnnyboy! Everything's working superbly so far and the few voice calls I've made to test the use of a standard phone in the RJ11 socket have been crystal clear compared with the Orange landline, where it always seems as if we're conducting conversations underwater while the bells of Notre Dame Cathedral resonate in the background. No wonder we couldn't even sustain dial-up on the Orange landline!!!

The only thing that has taken a little icing off a very nice cake is that Sosh have come up with a special offer today where the 50 GB package I signed up for at 24.99 € is on special offer for 9.99 € for the first 12 months - still, mustn't grumble.......GRRRRR

[Martin963]

So glad it's working out so well for everyone....

As some will know,   we happily ditched the landline this time last year,  with no regrets.  However,   we have potential (French) buyers for the place,  and they asked for the landline to be re-instated,  with good reason,  because with la tempete that hit us two months ago,  two poles along our lane were brought down,  and they wanted certainty that a line could be provided again.

With this in mind,  it seemed sensible to get the line up and running,  at our expense,  and Orange seemed to be keen to "have us back",  assuring us that the damaged poles and wires would be repaired at their expense,  we'd just pay the normal €55 set up fee for a new line.   However,  they told me that they now only provide fixed lines via a Livebox using VOIP,  one can no longer have an "old fashioned" simple base-band analogue line.  When I squawked my protest at this,  they explained that there is no rental on the Livebox in these "telephone-only" situations.   Fair enough....

Long story short,  after many visits from technicians,  we have a working line,  albeit one that runs along the ground,  rather than up in the air.  That repair is for later when they've caught up with more urgent stuff....

The reason I'm telling you all this is because,  interestingly,  the Livebox is not hobbled in any way to prevent one using the internet,  which of course has to be there to provide the VOIP for the phone.   Now our old ADSL speed was a max of 600 kbps,  often less.   The Livebox for the phone provides 300 kbps to 400 kbps,  so not all that different to what we were getting before.

The irony is that this new internet service is completely GRATIS,   and I can't help being a tiny bit annoyed that we paid €21 per month on top of our line rental for ten years,  to have a service little better than the one we now effectively get free.   For someone with little funds and currently with no phone line,  ordering a line now is a cheap way of getting the telephone and basic internet for the price of the line rental,  with free rental on the Livebox.

OK,  you won't be downloading films on it,  but for basic email and browsing it's passably adequate.

But having a landline again is such a pain,  I've spent more time on the phone to Orange trying to get it to work than is good for me,  probably at least three hours in the last three weeks.   The only plus point is that SOSH (via my 4G router phone line) don't charge anything for phoning 3900,   even after you get to speak to someone,   whereas those mean s*ds at Orange themselves charge you the cost of a local call,   just so you can tell them that it's not working properly.    I shall be glad to see the back of them.....

[johnnyboy]

Hi All,

I am fairly satisfied with our new system via SOSH now and have ditched the Livebox.

We do however have a couple of slight hitches as follows:

1) We do not seem to be able to find our voicemail messages, any ideas please?

2) We also cannot see the number calling in any more, any ideas on that one please?

No regrets, in spite of these, as the service is soooooo much better and faster too, whilst being roughly half the price!!

Regards,

Johnnyboy.

[Martin963]

Caller dispay I haven't solved,  but your SOSH "answering machine"

should be available when you dial 888,  you can personalise the message

etc.

My tiny annoyance with having the card in a

4G router is that in order to access the text messages you have to log

in (in our case via 192.168.8.1),  put in the password for the router, 

and then view SMSs like that.   However,  the upside is that I can write

whole essays by SMS as once logged in I am of course typing on a

computer keyboard,  rather than on a fiddly little text screen.   And as

SMSs are unlimited on the SOSH offer it can be convenient for those

people we know who have a mobile phone but not an email address.....

[johnnyboy]

Thanks for that Martin, Castaway sent me some info from a French forum on that subject. Have not been able to get to that yet as SWMBO has lots of other jobs for me to do, which are far more important!! (until she remembers about the lack of caller ID of course)

Johnnyboy

[NotAgain]

I've managed to get my Huawei 4G router and Gigaset A420 connected to the RJ12  socket working pretty well, showing caller ID and all - but what I can't do is to beat the SOSH /Orange answer machine. Does anybody know how i can extend the number of rings before the Orange messagerie cuts in so that my base station answerphone can beat it to the draw? Remember, this is to all intents and purposes a mobile phone and not a landline - grateful for any help.

Thanks,

Iain - (was CastAway but changed ID for reasons too complicated and boring to relate)

[Kong]

You need to go to your espace client on your sosh account. Locate the tab 'equipment' and there on the lign fix tab select 'renvoi d'appel'. you can select up to nine rings before the call is diverted to the sosh (= orange) voicebox..

Hope you can find it, it's a bit tricky.

[NotAgain]

Thanks, Kong - I got as far as "Locate the tab 'equipment'" but then couldn't get any further, couldn't see any reference to 'renvoi d'appel'. When I did a search on that, it seemed to refer just to call forwarding.

[Kong]

Yes, it is the call forwarding. You get the options to forward your call to another number or the message box, in which case you get the option to select how many rings before the call is forwarded.

[NotAgain]

Thanks - I'll have another go when I've got the chance.

[NotAgain]

Still somewhat confused. I've posted a message in the Sosh forum to see if they have any more info. But thanks for your help - I'll re-post when (if) I figure it out ?