ADSL with France Telecom

[AEB]

France Telecom have just announced ADSL availability in our village (a holiday home).  My French is not up to the details of what is available (I know it should be and I apologise to those who would criticise).

I understand the different speed options, it is what else we get with the different options that is totally opaque.  Is anyone able to help please?

Reasonably fast web access, ability to receive a call when one of the kids is surfing (we do not need two phone lines) and my husband's desire to use VoIP to call his UK office (when he gets round to finding out how it is done!!!!!) are our only requirements.  We will use the comms connection but hook into our UK mail service provider so no interest in new wanadoo addresses etc.

I get the impression that I need extense plus livebox and just have to chose the speed of extense - trading speed against price - but I can see there is more to it than this.  I am just not sure what!

I have the phone number for the new France Telecom pan-France English speaking operator so I know I can order it when I know what I am to get!

Many thanks

 

[I1]

No “right answer” about what you should get as it will be different for everybody.

First thing is to go to http://www.degrouptest.com/ and check what speeds are on offer. In practice Wanadoo will probably offer most of the range but it might be possible that really high speeds may be limited for you.

You need an ADSL box to connect your computer to Wanadoo. What you need will depend on your computer and what you are looking to do with it. USB, Ethernet, Wireless and LiveBox.

If you go for a USB modem then looks like a one off cost of €1 (needs a USB port). Ethernet then a one off cost €30 (you will need a network or network card in your computer). Looks like the “LiveBox” is their only WiFi (wireless) offering these days and you pay for that €3 per month (ongoing charges).

If you want to watch videos or TV over the internet you need at least 1024KB (probably more).

Be careful of their current offers. At the moment 1024 and above are all €29-90 but look at what the price goes to after 6 months. Only the 1024 stays at €29-90.

From personal experience I use 1024 and can happily use VoIP (Skype) whilst browsing and sending/receiving e-mails. (With ADSL you can use your telephone whilst using the ADSL with any of the options).

With my Ethernet ADSL box (from Wanadoo), it is not an “always on connection” – though I use it as such. The ADSL box still needs to connect with a username and password from the computer (I just leave it connected the entire time). I cannot have two computers connected through the box at the same time. If I try and connect through a 2nd computer the connection fails until close the connection from the 1st computer. I could not see anything that suggested Livebox does anything differently. Maybe this is my configuration (great if anybody can tell me how to change it – my Speedtouch 510 does not appear in my Windoze UpnP devices though on somebody else’s computer it briefly shows then disappears)

[AEB]

very helpful - thanks a lot

[Richardk]

We use ADSL from Wanadoo at 512k which in reality always connects at 622k. We use a USB ADSL modem which came as part of the deal and run three PC's from the same connection. Our particular set-up is as follows:

Main PC: Old desktop which acts as our central filing cabinet if you like, and which provides the connections to the internet.  This connection is then shared out using the Internet Sharing option which is part of Windows. Before we had ADSL we had a wireless network, hence having all the bits rather than subscribing to Livebox we have a network cable coming from the PC to a network hub. Our wireless network access point (http://www.belkin.com/uk/ for us) plugs into this.

Two laptops: these both have PCMCIA wireless network cards plugged in which enables us to roam around as we like within a certain distance, as well as physical cables so that if sitting at our desks we can have a faster connection speed. It's really only for copying of large files, and graphics or web work that we find the wireless a bit too slow. For web browsing and most standard day to day stuff it's great.

It's always easy to upgrade your Wanadoo package to a faster speed, but harder and longer winded to downgrade.  My recommendation would be to start 'low' and work up  -  you can always change after a couple of weeks if it's not good enough and you can do this online.

Regards,

Richard