Satellite for Internet & TV

[clairegs]

Hello, We are seriously considering purchasing a house in the Luberon. I checked on the website observatoire.francethd.fr and as I thought there is no internet connection to the property. I am unfamiliar with satellite dishes however after some looking on the internet, I understand that it is possible to install a satellite dish that receives a broadband signal for having both internet and TV (streaming) use. Can anyone give some experience with this? Is it in general a reliable signal? Is it possible to stream films? This may be a deal breaker if we are unable to have internet service as this is to be a permanent home and we will be doing some work from home. Appreciate any comments!

[grumpyaudeman]

Hi

I imagine you will have at least a copper connection and get a slow internet connection I lived for a few years out side of Freesat TV and managed with slow 1.25 MB internet connection via a VPN to watch UK television threw the BBCiplayer What you are thinking about is very expensive and does have download limits

[Dave&Olive]

Hi

I would hang back ...The speed at which fiber optic is being installed is rapid in France at the moment it has just come to our remote hamlet and our BB speed has gone from 0.6 to 20

Dave

[clairegs]

Hello,

Thank you for responding. Currently as I understand there is no type of connection there and the area is white on the observatoire website. Does anyone know if it is the mairie one needs to contact to find out the plans for bringing fibre optics to areas? Also, has anyone had experience with a satellite company they would recommend? Would like to make some inquiries for pricing.

Thank you

[Hereford]

Do you mean that the house has no phone line which could be used for broadband? That can be sorted easily.

[sid]

As others have already suggested, start with enquiries about a normal phone line. Orange for example. You don't have to have Orange broadband, but you do need a line first.

I looked at the website you mentioned and for our fairly remote village the details shown are not very accurate; many homes just outside the village centre are shown as having no broadband connection but I know that they are indeed online. The way that the mapping shows as circular spots surely can't be correct, it's not like mobile phone cells, but tends to run along streets etc wherever the phone line can go.

Satellite is expensive and for streaming I don't think it's going to be practical unless you have deep pockets.

[grumpyaudeman]

I have just looked at the web site you refer to, its not accurate it states for me less than 3 MB but I have via copper wire 11.5 MB

I also looked at my last home 3 months ago it stated less than 3 MB I was getting much higher 7,5MB going further back 3 years I was getting 1.25 MB in an area now 10 MB plus but I was in the middle of nowhere at the end of long copperline

[AnOther]

Have you investigated 4g ?

My French landline scrapes in 3-4mb (recently improved from 2) but with a 4g router and an external antenna I can pull in 20mb or so with 5-8mb upload speed.

The irony is having limped on with that frustrating 2mb misery for 10 years just as I throw off the shackle I sell up and move to Spain !

[quote user="clairegs"]we will be doing some work from home. Appreciate any comments![/quote]I know this is going off at a tangent but with the justification that you did say 'any' comments, you do realise that ANY work you do in France MUST be through a legally established business entity ?

Being confined to a computer keyboard does not absolve you from that, in France work is work is work and believe me you the last thing you ever want or need is the French tax man taking a special interest in you !

[Hereford]

Agree with AnOther.  Also remember that having a business here will impact on your right to an S1 for health insurance (see posts on question about SIRET number).

[Martin963]

I would urge you not to go down the internet-by-satellite route unless you absolutely have to.   If you search around on the net you will see an absolute standard pattern of problems,  works fine for two months,  then slows down to a crawl.  It's happened to friends of ours,  and the collapse happens - surprise surprise - just after the period when you can send all the equipment back (it's an expensive initial investment) and cancel without penalty.

I go along with AnOther,  we tried 4G as an experiment when it arrived here nine months ago,  and completely ditched the landline only weeks later,  having had ten years of 0.6 Mbps via the copper pair - that is when it worked,  at a very high cost for a terrible service.  We have both SFR/RED and SOSH SIM cards,  free calls all round Europe,  100 GB and 40 GB per month data,  and they give respectively 10 and 30 Mbps pretty consistently.   I've recommended and installed a dozen similar systems in the village and immediate surrounds.   If you go down that route you're OK until they bring you fibre,  in our neck of the woods I'll believe the fibre when I see it.....

Perhaps should add - best results via 4G are when used with a stand-alone 4G modem-router,  similar to a normal telephone line modem-router,  but having a SIM card slot instead of a phone line connection.  Most of these modems have several ethernet sockets,  and Wifi,  so in essence behave just like a conventional phone-line router,  except for the fact they communicate with the internet via 4G and not via a phone-line.  Probably obvious,  but repeated just in case.....

[sid]

Just following up on this, I'd go down the 4G route if only we had a decent signal ! It's part of the same problem of living out in remote areas, no decent mobile signal and stuck with slow broadband. My broadband was recently improved to 4mega after I complained to Orange at Christmas (when it dropped to 512k for a week). Having been on 2mega for over 10 years it feels like luxury !

[Martin963]

Oh indeed sid,  and I do feel for you.  I wonder if you have a 3G signal,  in many circumstances that will get up to 6 Mbps and beyond,  and 4G is being rolled out to more and more areas.   But as you say - no 4G signal,  no fast internet by that method!

[Lehaut]

Before we got a reasonable line here, we did try WifiMax for a while. I could not recommend the operator we used, but it might be worth looking to see if there is one in your area to use until '"proper" internet arrive.

Basically its WiFi anntenna installed in high buildings (church towers for example). You put up a parabole on your house facing the nearest one and connect using their modem.

As a starter:

https://www.alsatis.com/wimax.php

[Martin963]

Folk round here with WifiMax have often had problems,  and there has been little or no practical help from the operators.  One of the people I "converted" to 4G was delighted to be able to ditch their WifiMax forthwith,  which hadn't been working for three months,  but for which they'd still been having to pay.

[Théière]

With barely a 2g signal in our village, I can't see anything improving for a while. I did wonder if it is worth contacting a provider and renting them some space to put an aerial mast.

[AnOther]

If it were commercially viable there would probably be a mast somewhere reasonably nearby already but in any case somewhere to site a mast is only a tiny tiny fraction of the total involved in putting one up and no operator is going to do it to serve a mere handfull who have chosen to situate themselves in some remote corner of the middle of nowhere.

Don't forget though that for any given spot the level of service can vary enormously between operators so just because you can't pick up a signal from whomever you are currently with that does not automatically mean that all operators will perform as poorly.

Also 4g LTE is an incredible technology which can provide a very surprising performance from what in 3g terms would be a completely unusable signal.

Without getting too technical I'm talking of signals in the order of say -105 to 110db microvolts which would be useless on 3g but with the same signal level a 4g LTE router could potentially give you as much as 20mb, and thats on it's own internal antennas, bang up a couple of external ones and you'll be the envy of the neighbourhood !

Assuming you even have a 4g LTE phone (not all 4g phones are LTE) the big problem is that there is no easy way to evaluate what any individual operator may be good for at any given location and the only real way to check it out is in to buy a prepaid 4g LTE data sim from each and see which works and which doesn't.

[Martin963]

Ernie (last para) is quite right,  but you can do *some* basic homework on likely possibilities using these two websites:

https://www.couverture-mobile.fr/

and

https://www.monreseaumobile.fr/

As he says,  the 4G LTE technology is pretty remarkable,  our SFR signal is very weak indeed (we're not in fact officially covered for 4G) but can still produce a stable 10 - 12 Mbps.  Further up the garden we achieve much greater speeds,  I once recorded 74 Mbps which of course is faster than a lot of fibre.

[dexter]

I don’t visit the forum much these days so apologies if you’ve sorted out your dilemma but for what it’s worth I’ll throw in my two penneth worth on the subject.

Until March of this year my only option for Internet connection was via satellite since my arrival in France in 2011. During this time I used two different providers, Nordnet and Europasat. Nordnet became too expensive so I changed to Europasat and was paying €55 per month until January this year when the price increased to €59 per month. There’s no mobile signal here so 4G just isn’t an option.

Whilst the broadband connection was adequate it was by no means fast, I’m not technically minded so have no idea of speeds and the like but come the school holidays and especially in August when it seems that everyone wants to connect to the satellite then it would slow down to less than a crawl. Opening a short YouTube video was a struggle at the best of times but almost impossible during holiday seasons.

There’s also a limit on how much usage you can have per month, when you’ve reached it you can purchase extra time but it’s expensive.

I would think that a TV connection would eat up your monthly allowance in a matter of hours. I use the Freesat system for my TV and am lucky enough to get an excellent signal.

I’m now connected to ADSL through my Orange landline which has been a battle to obtain since I found out that my next door neighbor who lives about 30 meters away has been connected for the past 18 months! I’m now paying less for my internet and phone combined than I was for my satellite connection.

The rural idyll that so many of us crave for can certainly have its downsides!

Good luck.