Internet in a French holiday home?

[Alcazar]

Sorry if this is a daft series of questions, I've tried searching, but can't find anything to put my mind at rest.

We have a property in 87. Wife uses internet a fair bit in her work, and wants me to research having it available in France too. We have a phoneline in the French house, with working phone. Broadband is, unfortunately, unavailable to us in France.

When we reconnected the phone to France Telecom, we were offered internet (with Wanadoo? I think), but it came to nowt as their system couldn't accept the credit card details I gave them over the phone, and by the time they contacted me I was aback in the UK.

It SEEMED to be something in which I'd have to pay monthly, but keep on ringing them to tell them to switch it on when we were there, and off when we weren't, and I'm not sure I trust THAT to work properly. 

So..............what I need to find out is:

Is there any way I can use OUR ISP from France, paying only for the calls, or would that be prohibitively expensive?

Is there another way, other than the one previously offered?

What on earth do others do? We can't be the only people in this position?

In any replies please take into account that I am NOT computer literate, so will need blow by blow if |I'm not to pester you with "what does this mean" type questions.

Many thanks for any help.

Alcazar

[les Favets]

Hows about a  LAP TOP ??  Friend of mine obviously requires to be in touch with his work when over here in his holiday abode, brings his lap top doesn't have any French tel/connection

Regards Les Favets

[Gyn_Paul]

[quote]Hows about a LAP TOP ?? Friend of mine obviously requires to be in touch with his work when over here in his holiday abode, brings his lap top doesn't have any French tel/connection Regards Les Fav...[/quote]

".........doesn't have any French tel/connection"

 

Erm... am I missing something ? If he doesn't have a French Tel connection, how does he get onto the internet ?

 

paul

[Ron Avery]

Wanadoo do let you have a holiday period, though doubt they or anybody else in the world would offer summer on/winter off.  Wanadoo also do a pay as you go which might be better, check "nos offres" on their website

[BJSLIV]

I use Tele2 internet which cost 10 euros a month for 35 hours. Its not the cheapest, but the positive side is that for any calendar months that you don't connect to the net you pay nothing at all. If I arrive a couple of days before the end of the month I use PAYG from another supplier , and keep it short. You have to sign up to Tele2 phone service as well, no charge for that, but if you don't opt for preselection then you don't have to use their service, which isn't too expensive anyway. Would 35 hous be enough in any one month?

 

PS There is no minimum contract etc etc.

[John87]

It all depends on your useage I guess.

In our place in France, we use Wanadoo as our French ISP, no monthly bill contract, pay as you go via the France Telecom main bill. It works out at about E0.1 minute. I know this is'nt the cheapest but as we're not there for months on end, we save on the monthly charges so evens out I guess. Complete with email adress etc

If we lived there all the time (one day, one day..) I'd look for a cheaper solution but right now this is ok. Like you, our part of 87 does'nt have broadband either.

You can sign up via the Wanadoo web site for authorisation codes etc.

Hope this helps..

[Clarkkent]

Go to your nearest hypermarket and you will almost certainly find "free" disks from Wanadoo and Tiscali offering a range of tariffs including pay-as-you-go dial-up services.

I have a Tiscali dial-up connection on my laptop and I can use it to "intercept" e-mail from my UK ISP. When I'm in France I just set it as my default and unset it when I leave.

[Moulin Neuf]

Why don't you just pick up an AOL trial disc and use it for a month and then cancel it!

We have an internet cafe in our town - Civray 86400.

 

Jan

[Rjpfrancais]

La Poste offer a PAYG service @ 0.02 cents per minute. You can sign up online at www.laposte.net. I use Neuf Telecom myself (100 hours per month for 19.90 euro) but also have a La Poste account as a fall back. The cost of the calls appears on your FT bill.

[Loiseau]

I use free.fr as a dial up ISP from a second home in the Vendee.
You can sign up online from the UK if you want ( www.free.fr ), give them your French phone number, and think up a username.  Nothing to pay; the only charge is a local French dialup for the call.  I get a connection at 48Kbps

They send the dialup number, a password, and a CD to your French address.
NB  It's advisable *not* to install from the disk, as it can interfere with stuff already set up on your PC/laptop. 

You only need to enter the username, dialup number and password to make a new connection in My Computer - Dialup Networking.

And then configure Outlook Express so that you can collect mail from your UK ISP.  You can also send replies on the free.fr connection, still headed with that of your UK ISP, so you don't have to confuse people by giving them another email address.
I am not in France at present, so can't tell you the appropriate details to enter.
I think for free.fr that the setting for incoming mail is pop.free.fr, and outgoing mail smtp.free.fr

The only cost to you is for a local French call, for the time you are online.

Of course, unless you are using a laptop the emails that you receive and send from your French computer will not be present on your UK computer when you get home!   You need to remember to copy any important ones onto a disk and take them home with you

Angela

www.the-vendee.co.uk

[Mazan]

http://www.frenchentree.com/fe-techcorner/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=435

I strongly advise never to use any ISP's CDRom (except for AOL when it is obligatory) if you value your sanity. The Wanadoo software is especially evil and far more invasive than anything AOL ever produced. You never need to install it, regardless of what type of Wanadoo account you have (dial-up, ADSL, etc.).

Nearly all French ISPs (except AOL) offer a "pay as you go" account that costs nothing per month and for which all call costs appear on your FT phone bill. Call charges are at a special off-peak local rate that doesn't increase during the day. It comes to just over 1€ per hour, but more for short calls. This is fine for occasional users. Most ISPs also offer "forfait" packages of x hours for y Euros and this is much cheaper for regular users. Some ISPs still offer unlimited or semi-unlimited dial-up packages though these are getting rarer.

[Dick Smith]

To answer Alcazar's question directly, what I have done is to take on a Free.fr connection in France and configured my laptop to collect mail from my 2 UK accounts via webmail. When in the UK I have my desktop configured to collect from France as well. This is easily done in Entourage, which I believe is just a late version of Outlook for Mac. There are some issues with Free.fr, and I wouldn't want to be online for a long time with them at any one sitting, but it works OK.

I agree with Mazan about the CD_ROMs from ISPs - they are the spawn of the devil. I had to reformat my hard drive to get rid of AOL.

[Mazan]

The link I gave above does explain how to configure OE to receive and send messages from two accounts using one connection. It is slanted towards those who want to use a new French account and an old UK account though it can be easily modified to suit any and all combinations of accounts.

It can also be adapted to suit AppleMail, Entourage, Outlook or indeed any other POP3 programme, all of which work basically the same way.

Webmail is a possible solution but I prefer the better message handling and storage that a POP3 client allows for.

[Dick Smith]

Mazan - my 'webmail' is done via POP3 - what is the distinction? I must say I didn't understand the subtleties, I just stuck the settings in and it worked - if it ever goes wrong I shall be stuck!

[Ron Avery]

Free may be OK for E mails but it is the slowest and least reliable internet system I have ever come across, it has little if any inbuilt virus protection and is very, very slow.  Because it is slow, speed at busy periods is often below 25 KBps  it costs much more in phone calls, I tried to down load a virus checker for a friend on Free it took 17 minutes, on Wanadoo on the same phone line it took 3 minutes!! 

[Mazan]

my 'webmail' is done via POP3 - what is the distinction?

Maybe we don't have the same understanding of the word "webmail".

Webmail usually means going to a website belonging to one's ISP (with Internet Explorer or Safari for example), inputting a login and password and then being able to view one's inbox and messages within a webpage (these sites generally use IMAP protocol for this rather than POP3). Most people find this handy when using a Cybercafe or other computer that isn't their own. Anyone using their own computer will normally find a POP3 client like Outlook Express to be more useful as it downloads all messages to the hard drive and enables you to consult them/reply to them later.

There are some webpages run by third parties that allow anyone to visit and input their email details and password. The site then connects to the POP server of your ISP and presents the email info as a webpage. This may be what you use. There's nothing wrong with it though for security reasons I would prefer to use the webmail option offered directly by my ISP (most do offer this) if I really had to use webmail. Having your own POP3 (or IMAP) client like Outlook Express, Eudora or Entourage is generally more useful than webmail though but of course this is only applicable if you are using your own computer.

[Dick Smith]

Ah - that explains it. Somewhere in the instructions it says 'using webmail' so I picked it up from there. I use the first method you describe, through Entourage, which I find excellent with very good spam filters, though the message rules can be a bit erratic.

Thanks for the reply.

[Dick Smith]

[quote]Free may be OK for E mails but it is the slowest and least reliable internet system I have ever come across, it has little if any inbuilt virus protection and is very, very slow. Because it is slow, ...[/quote]

I agree, but for us holiday homers it's a working compromise. I would go for Broadband even if I am only there 3 months of the year, but our hameau doesn't have it yet.

[chirpy]

i live in 87 in small hamlet and use neuf.fr and can get haute debit =broadband cost for modem 2 euro month rental and18euro for unlimited use per month and no contract.My son visits with laptop and actually uses his mobile phone infra red link whilst sitting outside in garden.cest la vie.

It is easy to check locally whether you can receive haute-debit and maximum is possible here while my son has only just got it in u.k. despite living withih 10 miles of cambridge.!!!!!!!

[Mazan]

Neuf (aka 9Online) no longer have any ADSL offer at all in non-degrouped areas. You are either in a degrouped area (which means being very close to a city or big town, or in Ile de France) or you signed up with them before they withdrew from non-degrouped areas.

The ADSL situation in France has changed radically in the past 6 months and just because one person has something doesn't mean that it is still available to his neighbour. For example, I have Tiscali 512k ADSL for 20€ which used to be the best value offer in France but this offer is no longer available and the only Tiscali offer here now is an expensive 1mb for 30€, plus rented special modem at 3 or 4€ per month. You can get twice the speed from Free or Wanadoo for the same money with no obligation to rent a special modem. Indeed the Free offer actually includes a special modem and unlimited free phone calls within France.

[BJSLIV]

As I  mentioned earlier the Tele2 56k offer at 10 euros a month suits me very well. For the price of 10 hours PAYG you get 35 hours, with nothing to pay in the months when its not used at all. Has anyone other than mysellg ever used them?

[cabman]

There are are some interesting postings here.

It seems the main issue for some of us is access to email.

Until I arrived at this thread I had been drawn to upgrading my mobile to a Blackberry.

Now I'm totally confused!

We have phone line and telephone but so far not connected to France Telecom since moving in.

Anyone remember the current subscriber fee and monthly standing charges to reinstate my landline in France? Anyone got blackberry? 

For me email is a must and internet might be a useful bonus if I use the laptop.

[BJSLIV]

For a basic line, FT charge 13 euros per month plus a one-off connection charge of 46 euros.

[Will]

I think if it's merely a matter of reconnecting a single previously-working line the connection charge is more like 30€, but either way it's not going to break the bank, and much better than relying on mobiles.

Note that 0860 numbers, as used for most internet dialups, are not normally included in packages from companies like OneTel or France Telecom all-inclusive deals.

All you need is a pay-as-you go ISP subscription, which, as long as you know the phone number you will be using to dial out can be set up before you arrive in France, with companies like Tiscali, as Mazan describes in his link.

I personally like Tiscali webmail as it allows me to download attachments separately, unlike Outlook Express, but the beauty of setting up an internet connection is that you can use either way to deal with e-mails.