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Cost of basic internet and telephone


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Hello All,

We are not resident in France but aim to spend a few weeks a year in our French house. We need internet access for work purposes since the mobile/dongle option is not working well for us due to poor signal in the area. Therefore we will have to bite the bullet and install a telephone line in order to get broadband connection stable enough to work from France while we are there. We have kind friends who offer for us to use their wireless connection but we really don't want to impose on them. The landline could be useful as we can't get any signal at all in our viallge on our mobiles and are contstantly driving around trying to pick up a signal in order to contact family and our offices in the UK. Can anyone suggest cheapest way forward?

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FT/Orange do a deal for maisons secondaires where you can have a phone line while you are there and when you leave you can get it switched off and not pay till you go back again. I think there is also an Orange découverte internet package with no minimum contract that you can keep setting up and cancelling. Can't give you precise details as I don't use it but you'll find it all on the orange website, or no doubt someone will be along with more info in due course.

Of course carrying out any work at all in France is a can of worms in itself - technically as soon as you make a work-related phone call or send a work-related email you become instantly classed as resident and thence issues of tax/registration/cotisations/etc - you need to be aware, in case you weren''t already, and don't go shouting it from the rooftops that you are working ;/
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Thanks for that quick response and for all the useful info. I will be sure to check it all out. Wow-I didn't know that we could be classed as resident just by logging on remotely to answer work related emails. It's a blessing in some ways that we are uncontactable whilst in France but it means we can't stay too long before work forces us to return to the UK.
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You dont get classed as resident just by doing a few work related jobs. Residency in france is based on where your "home" is. Residency for UK criteria is based on number of days in/out the country. Clearly if your main home is in the UK and you are only in France for a few weeks, you are not resident in France.

if you are only present for a short periods,

Perhaps consider the basic internet service, as per orange and a separate cheap PAYG VOIP supplier for cheap telephone calls. If you wanted to you could even have UK issued local or national rate number in France, that you could also use when back in the UK - or ring at the same time. if needed it would also provide free calls between your two houses. e.g we are currently using sipgate.co.uk and draytel.org ,but there are many others to chose from.
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Thank you for that information. We have now ordered a telephone line and broadband from Orange. My husband called Orange(France Telecom) on their english speaking line 0969363900 yesterday 30th Jan and they will do a site survey on 7th Feb then install the telephone line & broadband on 14th Feb. For others who might be interested:-

We can have the telephone line and broadband switched on and off as and when required by giving 10 days notice. The cost was €69 for site survey, €55 connection, €19 per mth (pro rata) for tel line and €21 per mth for the broadband (pro rata). Each time we suspend the service there is a charge of €4.60

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Its actually 16 Euros per month for the line, 3 euros less than you mentioned.

You will find that you can switch the line on and off over the internet. The Broadband is more complicated as they now insist on the termination being done in writing. This is because each time you switch it off you are terminating the contact, and each switch on is the start of a new contract.

If by any chance the 3 euros difference in the line rental is connected the rental of the Orange Livebox , this further complicates things, as you have to return the thing each time.....
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Another possibility is that the OP has been sold an extra package of 2h per month of inclusive calls within France for 3 euros extra

http://boutique.orange.fr/ESHOP_mx_ft/?tp=F&ref=3500&IDCible=1&type=3&WT.ac=1000636

Un forfait au choix (facultatif) :

- 2 heures de communications par mois vers tous les fixes de France Métropolitaine + 15 sms pour 19€/mois

Danny

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Thank you for your reply. Maybe we will just leave everything on the whole time and set up a webcam so we can check from home what going on in our petite maison. Hope the builder has been busy getting the work done ! ha ha

 

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Be very, very wary of the Orange scheme for residences secondaires. We signed up for this through the English speaking line but were never told that although you can ring and cancel the actual phone line, you have to pay continuously for the broadband. What is the point of the broadband if you have no phone line to use it with? It made what had seemed a realistic option completely unsound financially and as I said none of that was explained when we asked about it so we wrongly assumed that both services were suspended at the same time. Once we started getting bills for periods we had suspended alarm bells went off and suddenly although Orange had been more than happy to sign us up in English, they were completely unable to understand now things had gone wrong.

We persisted and eventually (after about 18 months I think) sorted it out but it was very stressful at the time and we are with SFR now who at least are up-front about their service.
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