Surfing the net with Bougues contract Eden Bloqué 1Hr + WE other than with WiFi

[JohnRoss]

The memsaib recently took out this contract with Bouygues having got a

Samsung Galaxy Ace portable. What I cannot find out is if access to the Internet

is possible by other than WiFi access or have you got to buy an additional

service to the basic contract?

 

The Bouygues web site is not very helpful as

there seems no way to email a question to them and it is a long hike to the shop

she got it from. WiFi is fine if you can find a hotspot with public access but

they are few and far between outside of towns! Any advice from someone who knows

would be well received..........JR

[Quillan]

Well I don't know for sure but looking at their website I believe it is for calls only and no data. This does not mean you can't use it for data but as I discovered with SFR it is very expensive, in fact it is outragously priced. I can't remember exactly what I paid but it was somewhere between 15 and 20 Euros for about 5 minutes connection. Needless to say I have disabled the function just in case I accidently use it and just use WiFi for data connection both at home and out and about. Not quite what you wanted to hear I know. It may pay you to look at Free which offers a good deal on mobiles including free calls and 3gb of download per month for around 20 Euros per month. I have placed a link below to a thread which you can wade through.

http://services.completefrance.com/forums/completefrance/cs/forums/2662325/ShowPost.aspx

Problem is if your in a contract at present and the phone is locked you may be a bit stuck. Hope that helps until somebody who knows more comes along. Good luck.

[JohnRoss]

Yes and thanks for the info. I did a little experiment having logged into my Espace Client Bouygeus Telecom, My consumption. It showed that we had used the portable phone for only a few minutes in the current month and I made a call using the portable to our landline phone lasting three minutes and the site showed a reduction of three minutes on our 1Hr monthly limit but despite using the phone to send and receive emails via WiFi from our Neuf box no reduction in our 200MB allocation was registered. So if WiFi does not count against monthly allocation what does, 3g use? So the question is simple have we got 3g or not. If not why does the contract say 200MB for Internet use and if we have why cannot we get it to work? I will just have to make the trip to the shop in Niort I guess. Daft that you cannot email them. I did post the question on their experts forum but it has been there for 24 hours with no response as yet! You can phone them but as my French is not that good/fast I would prefer to do it in writing.........JR  

[Quillan]

Save sitting here typing I have given a link below that explains it in laymans terms.

http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/guides/what_is_3g/

I am a bit uncertain about your comment about 200MB, is that a limit on your Internet access per month via say a PC/Laptop? I ask this because there are mobile phone plans that include a limited data usage, the more you pay the more you get. 200MB is not very much, to give an example it is about a quarter or less of a film in normal resolution, a camera these days is typically 3MB per picture and a record album in MP3 format is on average around 120 to 150MB. Could it be that your mobile phone comes with 200MB of free download via 3G per month?

My Samsung Galazy S has a tiny symbol that comes on when in 3G range, most of the time it isn't unless we are in a big city or town.

[JohnRoss]

The 200MB is for the Internet on the Samsung Galaxy Ace portable phone and not a PC. We have SFR as the Internet provider for PCs. When we bought the phone the sales woman asked if we had WiFi at home and at the time we said no as we had not had the storm yet at that time and our AOL Box was still working. ("See other post about Another modem bites the dust")  It was sometime later that following the storm the Neuf box with WiFi was supplied. So it was clear to her that we did not have WiFi and we had explained that we wanted to surf the net with the phone away from home and hence the 200MB issue. She did say that was sufficient for looking at emails and general surfing though not for downloading video etc. This seemed ok to us as really it would not get used that often and mostly for looking at and sending emails when away from home.

I think you may have identified our problem in that we are nowhere near a large town and the signal here is only useable in one or two places high up in the property. So it may be that 3g is not available on the signal we get from our local repeater tower anyway. The nearest town is 11kms away and not very big so maybe 3g is not available there either. I think I shall have to make the trip to Niort which being the capital of the region should have stuff like 3g available I guess. As the sales person knew our address one wonders if she should have told us that Internet was not likely to be available here or anywhere in the vicinity other than by WiFi which she knew we did not have at the time! Have not seen any symbol for 3g on the beast so far. The phone facility seems to work ok but at 19.90 Euros a month herself is not getting good value without access to the Internet except at home which she does not really need anyway as she can use the PCs for that! We had a perfectly good Orange pay as you go phone but because we had not made any calls for 6 months they cancelled the SIM card and now tell us that they don't do replacement chips for that model.

Having looked for contact info for Bouygues on the net it would appear that a lot of folk are also fed up with them for not having a direct contact email address they can write to and explain their problems. Beginning to regret being talked into getting this thing and wonder if other companies are any better. Still got to sort it as herself has a 24 month contract. Because of that the phone was cheap with a 30 euro discount as well. Don't know what would happen if we told them to get stuffed and tried to cancel the contract! I should have done some more research on this but we were just off on holiday and wanted a phone for emergencies. We live and learn, not!.........................JR

 

[Quillan]

I think your right, you don't have 3G where you live. The 200MB of data is just for the phone.

Buying a phone is a nightmare in France because some phones don't work in some areas. I have Orange for Internet, phone etc but an SFR mobile on the 9.99 per month tariff because I can't get 3G that well in general where I live. Orange and Free are about as much use as a chocolate teapot with no reception at all unless in the middle of the garden and one leg in the air and that's on a good day.

The other thing you may need to know is some of the apps like GPS for driving can be very greedy on data. This is because it downloads the piece of map as you go and then discards it. If she wants GPS Navigation then I would suggest CoPilot which I have used on a PDA in the past and is quite good. The benefit is the map which is held in the phone. Personally I prefer TomTom but then it is only available on Apple devices due to some deal they have made.

[JohnRoss]

You are right according to this map. http://www.sensorly.com/map/2G-3G/FR/France/Bouygues_Telecom/gsm_20820  I have zoomed in to our area and no sign of 3 or 2 g anywhere near us by any of the service providers. Interesting to compare the map of France with that of the UK and despite one site suggesting that 99% of UK properties are covered there are still some empty patches of the countryside and even more so in France. Round here in Deux Sevres only coverage along the major routes and in, as you have suggested, the larger towns. Don't know how up to date the map is....................JR

PS GPS not a problem as herself has a Tom Tom