Help! I need to decide on which ADSL

[WJT]

Hi, it appears we now have a choice other than Wanadoo. I was just going to order from France Telecom, Wanadoo but looked here

http://www.degrouptest.com/

and discovered that it appears we now have N9uf telecom and Cegetel as options in addition to Wanadoo. Just a few weeks ago our only option was Wanadoo. It appears Cegetel and N9uf are 14,90 euro a month versus Wanadoo's 24,90 euro for a higher Meg. Unless I am missing something it appears they are 20mg vs Wanadoo's 1mg.

It appears from reading about experiences here and elsewhere some are better that others, because of the language problems and being computer illiterate, I do not want to make a mistake. Could someone please give me advise as to which provider I should choose or not choose? Thank you in advance.

Edit: I just went through the process for Cegetel online to see what the price would be for our number and it is the same as Wanadoo 24,90 up to 5 meg. So perhaps the adverts are a little misleading. [:(]

[BJSLIV]

The lower charges usually apply in the bigger towns where you can rent the whole lot, line and ADSL from people like Neuf & Alice. In the smaller places the price gap is often a lot less, and the faster rates are sometimes not available. Happy hunting.

[Deimos]

Some ISPs are unable to fix a line at a lower rate. I know that my line will not work about 1MB (basically because I tried it, spent ages messing around, calling everybody and eventually got it going again by persuading France Telecom to restore the 1MB. However, everybody’s database says my line will run to 8MB. Is not that they are not prepared to provide a fixed 1MB ADSL, just that they cannot.

I have phoned a few other ISPs and they all say they cannot provide 1MB but only faster (dynamic rates). Thus, I know that if I switched to them my ADSL would stop working, I’d spend ages arguing with France Telecom, whatever ISP and getting nowhere – so I stick where I am. Just an aspect of living a fair distance from the exchange for me.

Ian

[WJT]

Thank you for your replies. I have decided to go with Wanadoo with FT. I set it up over the phone they did not ask me one question i.e. name address etc.. So hope that it is set up, just find it strange that you can make a phone call, give them your number and that is all that is needed to make a change. Oh well, at least it was easy.

Ian, the site says that I can run up to 2 mg and they told me today that I will get 1-2mg. If yours is telling you you can run 8 mg but are getting less than 1, I dread to think what speed mine will actually be because we are very rural as well.

I am set to get a USB modem that they supply for the 3 euro a month but will look into the Ethernet in the future, just wasn't confident enough to give it a try yet.

Now just looking forward to going to France in a few weeks time.  Just hope I will be up and running [:)]

Thank you again.

[Deimos]

In my case I think it was a signalling issue. The problems occurred when the link speed was negotiated. It seems to always “negotiate” a link speed that might work at that moment in time but it never dropped far enough to a speed it would maintain. Thus, when first switched on the link might work for between 1 and 10 minutes before failing. Actually negotiated speeds were always between 2 and 4 MB (FT warned me I would never get 8 and said the max I would achieve would be 5).

Seems that 1MB is fine and if the link if hard wired to 1 it works reliably. If it negotiates a faster link (above 2, then it becomes a bit dodgy and will not drop back to 1, where it can work properly).

Took FT 1 day to switch it from 1 to >2 and then a months to witch it back again.

The speed does not bother me atall – 1MB is more than fast enough for most use. 1MB is fine and I only increased the speed because the faster speeds were the same price.

Wanadoo started telling me it would all be great had I got one of their Liveboxes !!! (until finally one of Wanadoo’s technical people admitted that it was rubbish and the the problem was nothing to do with not having a Livebox and that ay ADSL modem was just as good as the Livebox with regard to the problem I was having

Ian

[WJT]

Well, at least it sounds like you know what you are talking about. If it happened to me I would be in trouble. In fact, please don't ask me questions on what you just said happened to your computer and your connection in your post [:-))]

I hope you get it sorted out, I know there is nothing more annoying than having computer problems particularly getting on line. Perhaps, because ADSL is new in rural France and to Wanadoo, they just have some things to work through, here's hoping anyway.