French Telephone Land Line and Broadband

[MOBD]

We are shortly moving to France and will need a land line and Broadband / internet connection. we will need inclusive calls to french and U K land lines, can anyone tell us the following,

What telecom companies and packages are available. Many thanks.

[Hoddy]

Before you start - are you sure that Broadband is available in your chosen area ? We've been promised ADSL for the last eight years and it has still not materialised.

Hoddy

[Martin963]

If you already have a line at a prospective property this

http://www.degrouptest.com/

will get you started.   Otherwise you could try entering another number nearby such as a neighbour's.

[Gardengirl]

After OH thought about it and checked out for what seemed forever, including could we actually receive broadband, we had Neuf installed a few months ago, and are very pleased with it. It's now SFR, but still sold as Neuf; I went with our neighbour a fortnight ago as she wanted the same package. It costs €34.99 each month, and she paid nothing at all on top of that for the box or anything else. We get broadband, free landline calls within Europe, to the States and a long list of other countries, and TV - but  we can't get that yet where we live, so people use ordinary TV. 

We went to Internecity in our local Carrefour shopping centre. They were very helpful. Both of us were told it could take up to a month, and a date is given; you can keep track on the internet, as there is a countdown. After ours said 8 days to go it suddenly said it was ready - and it was. It's worked perfectly apart from once; we were advised on this forum to unplug and start again, and it worked! Our neighbour was happy we'd be back in France by the time hers was to be ready in case she needed help, but in fact we had an email about 3 days after we left France to say it was already working; hers was about  12 days early.

We are very happy with it, and apparently when TV is available it should go down to €29.99; we can't figure that one out, but it will be good if it happens!  [:)]

[poohettigrou]

Where are you moving to, that will be the main factor as to what services you can receive.

[MOBD]

We are moving to a village about 15 minutes from St jean d'Angely in the Charente Maritime, we are not too bothered whether we are able to receive ADSL so long as we can get dial up connection, our main thing is the price packages for being able to phone the UK and French land lines for free . Mick

[Danny]

Mick,

You can get dial up internet anywhere there is a phone line. This is not broadband so will be pretty slow.

For broadband (normally ADSL) the speed will depend on the exact location of the phone line and how far it is from the exchange and if the exchange is ADSL enabled or not.

If you don't have a phone line yet, then that is the first thing to do. Go in to an Orange shop and ask to open a new line.  If there is a physical telephone line there already, it should cost 55 euros to do this. If not you will have to ask for a quote.

Once you have the phone line installed, you can then find out if it is elegible for ADSL. Orange should be able to tell you this too before you get a line.

Most of the companies who offer ADSL also do packages with inclusive unlimited VOIP calls (calls via the internet) to the UK and many other countries. It is hard to give you any more info about costs of calls/ADSL etc without knowing what may available on your line.

Danny