The future of broadband in France?

[joidevie]

We are soon to move to out next house in France and are looking at ADSL options. There is a phone line in yet no current subscription. Non degroupé.

There seem to be very few (if any) Tel+ADSL only packages (without all the bells and whistles of TV/unlimited calls) for what will effectively be no better than a 512k connection speed..

Are prices on the way down at all? The lack of competition and and high monthly cost are leading me in the direction of not bothering and relying on my uk mobile internet connection which is surprisingly good value compared to the €420 per year that Orange/FT want..

Having no current telephone provider in the new house, am I missing any great opportunity to find a good skeleton phone/internet package before heading for an FT line? I suspect not, and was just wondering if things are changing at all, perhaps sticking with the mobile for a year or so.. We visit the property monthly for a week at a time..

Many thanks for any insights..

[Quillan]

To say "no better than 512k" is a bit misleading as it depends where you are. Paris has had 100mb optic adsl for some time, much longer than the UK. We get 1mb but if you look round the forum some are getting 2mb, 4mb and one person even had 8mb (lucky devil).

[joidevie]

Point taken.. And I know in Urban areas France has been way ahead of the UK in terms of speed..

The quotes I get from SFR and Free are for 512k in my area, but Orange claim 8mb, though as this comes from the same cable, I'm slightly surprised. I can get 1.2mb on a good G3 reception on the mobile, though this can depend on the moon cycles..

[Clarkkent]

Jungle drums and smoke signals would be faster than the dial-up only service I can get in France.

[DerekJ]

We don't have a telephone line to the house yet (and obviously no assigned tele number). I understand there is an online broadband availability/speed? checker available but I believe this needs a tele number not just postcode.  Is there any way I could get a feel for the available speed that would be available to me - other than asking the neighbours?

[pachapapa]

You dont actually have to use physically the neighbours phone; just enter the number of the house nearest to you in the relevant search box. The evaluation is based on the parametric nominal characteristics of the line and will not actually effect a physical connection to the neighbours phone. Even I could do it for you from my Patagonian Proxy.[:)] Note qsome sites give the maximum bandwidth that the line COULD give; other sites give a selection of the best bandwidth on commercial offer; often much less.

[pachapapa]

[quote user="Quillan"]To say "no better than 512k" is a bit misleading as it depends where you are. Paris has had 100mb optic adsl for some time, much longer than the UK. We get 1mb but if you look round the forum some are getting 2mb, 4mb and one person even had 8mb (lucky devil).[/quote]

I live in rural france in a commune of less than 1000 persons, situated some 12 kilometres from the smll market town of Parthenay in the profound depths of  2Sèvres. Below a copy of a snippet from my Console d'Administration.

Ligne ADSL

État de la ligne	Synchronisé
Protocole	ADSL2+

Statistiques

	Voie montante	Voie descendante
Débit ATM	997 kbit/s	22962 kbit/s
Atténuation	6.1 dB	22.6 dB

22.962 mbit/sec  not bad!![:D]

[pachapapa]

Just tested actual line performance.[:)]   [IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/776615108.png[/IMG]

Just stuff that up the **** of that cocky ******* with 8 mbit/s.[:P]

[DerekJ]

[quote user="pachapapa"]You dont actually have to use physically the neighbours phone; just enter the number of the house nearest to you in the relevant search box. The evaluation is based on the parametric nominal characteristics of the line and will not actually effect a physical connection to the neighbours phone. Even I could do it for you from my Patagonian Proxy.[:)] Note qsome sites give the maximum bandwidth that the line COULD give; other sites give a selection of the best bandwidth on commercial offer; often much less.[/quote]

Thanks for that. [B]  I hadn't thought of doing it that way. I've got both our immediate neighbours tele numbers so I could try that.  Now, I've just got to find that website again.

[Will]

I suspect this is more like most people's realistic expectations:

[IMG]http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j205/vienormande/franceisp.jpg[/IMG]

[JonDuncan]

I'm quite jittery because broadband is finally nearly with me, after the longest wait. Now it's less than one month until it is supposed to get going - I say that with caution because it was originally supposed to get installed last November. I think it really is happening this time.

Anyway, I'm 4 km from the exchange in a rural area, I get a heady 28 kbits/s on dial-up .... what can I expect speedwise when the broadband actually gets going (if anyone has any idea)?

[Dave&Olive]

hi ok

           snap

          [URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/792885709.png[/IMG][/URL]

       dave

[Polly]

I have no idea what any of this means but the line works for me :

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/792891082.png[/IMG][/URL]

Is it good or not? Costs me 34€99 per month incl all standard landline calls to France and the worldwide destinations I use, and no FT abonnement to pay

[Sunday Driver]

8Mb Orange Découverte (800m from my exchange):

[img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/792921462.png[/img]

 

[Chancer]

Now we cant all have the same figure can we?

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/792997301.png[/IMG][/URL]

I smell a rat!

Editted: I swear that when ipreviewed the posting the figures were tha same as hi ok Dave, now they are different [8-)]

Is mine good, bad or indifferent? I live a little over one mile from the exchange as the corbeau flys.

[cooperlola]

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/793017049.png[/IMG][/URL]

Don't have a clue where my exchange is!  The differences in some of these figures is quite telling, isn't it?

[Polly]

[quote user="cooperlola"]

The differences in some of these figures is quite telling, isn't it?

[/quote]

Will one of you geeks please explain, in simple English (I'll accept spelling mistakes!) rather than geek-speak what any of these figures mean?

[cooperlola]

They are the speeds (in megabites per second) at which you upload (send) and download (receive) data and programmes.  I think that's right but some geek will correct me if not[geek]). The important bit is, the bigger the figure the faster and thus the better (as in a car engine!)

EDIT ; Thus yours and Sunday's are pretty good,Polly.

[Polly]

Thank you, I was thinking along the right lines then.

It's interesting that visitors from the UK using my internet often comment how fast it is compared to theirs at home!

[AnOther]

Polly, there are those who would sacrifice their first born for 6mbs, nuff said ?

Derek, the site you want is Degrouptest.com or Ariase.fr the latter being useful as it shows you where your exchange actually is.

A word of caution though, what near neighbours may be getting cannot be relied on as an accurate indicator of what you might get.

Chancer, at 1km I would be expecting blistering speed, fast enough to poke that smug pachapapa in the **** [Www]

Jon Duncan, in very broad terms at best a 4km line might give you something around 3mb. Remember though that 4km by road will almost certainly mean more than that by phone line, often by a factor of 2 or 3 or more.

Edit:

joidevie, sorry, didn't mean to leave you out. FT = forked tongue. They are offering an UP TO 8mb service but what you actually get will depend on your line so take note of what Degrouptest etc. say and you won't be disappointed.

[Polly]

Ok, but what's the PING mean?

[AnOther]

PING is just like a submarine sonar which sends out a signal and can determine the distance of an object by measuring the time it takes to echo

back, a PING on the internet does exactly the same and lower numbers are better.

Edit:

Incidentally you may notice that your PING is considerably longer than that of others with apparently slower speeds which just illustrates the inadvisability of relying on any speed test sites telling the whole truth. Ultimately all that matters is that whatever you do actually get is reliable and consistent.

[Polly]

Thanks!

[Panda]

Hello

My house in France is the backend of nowhere with very few houses around but I got good speeds as was within a couple of km of the exchange.  Here in the UK I get very fast speed but for what I do (work online, so email etc no larger than a few meg dowloads) you wouldn't notice the difference between the two. 

What I do notice however is that my connecion has been permenently up, no interruptions, no need to reboot the router, no need to reauthenticate to Orange which occured in France at least once a week and sometimes was out for a couple of hours at a time.  There for me is the difference but I did have a dreaded livebox to contend with!

Panda

[JonDuncan]

AnOther: Jon Duncan, in very broad terms at best a 4km line might give you something around 3mb. Remember though that 4km by road will almost certainly mean more than that by phone line, often by a factor of 2 or 3 or more.*

Very interesting, thank you. I do know the phone line does follow the road quite slavishly, so the distance in this case should be okay (goodness knows whether the line itself is good enough though). I shall wait slightly nervously to see what happens on 21 May, though any sort of real speed will seem pretty amazing after 8 years of slow dial-up ...

*can't get the quote function to work properly