Proper Broadband

[Pierre ZFP]

Does anybody have a view or experience in obtaining and using Broadband internet in France?  I'm due to be able to get it a bit later this year.  I'm not holding my breath as I'm a long way from a switching station.  Anyway, I've seen lots of advertisements for ADSL2+ from various providers ranging from around 18 euros for 8Mbit to 30 euros for a whopping 20 Mbit.  Are these introductory offers as they seem much cheaper than my meager 1Mbit BT Openwound line in the UK.  Also the seem to offer lots of extras like free VOI calls to fixed lines and streaming TV and films.  Are these fast speeds only available in big cities? Are they capped and you pay extra for more data download? Any info much appreciated.

Pierre

[Ex Forum Admin]

Hi,

I'll move this to the telephone, TV, internet forum to get more replies.

James

[Pangur]

We signed up with France Telecom, simply because it was the most straightforward option for us when we first moved.  We went for their extense Debitmax, which is €30 pm for the first 6 months and then €40 after that.  We don't get the full 8 meg, I think it is about 2, but it is pretty speedy and we don't feel the need for more.  We're just outside a town with about 10k inhabitants so it's not exactly in the sticks.

We did have some problems with installing the Livebox so we returned it for a normal modem version and it worked easily.

My husband regularly sends very large files to and from their network computer in London, and he logs into their main computer and he has absolutely no complaints with it.  The price is all inclusive regardless of how much you use it - as we are 'on' all day, this is perfect for us.

[Lizzie15]

[quote]Does anybody have a view or experience in obtaining and using Broadband internet in France? I'm due to be able to get it a bit later this year. I'm not holding my breath as I'm a long way from a swi...[/quote]

Hi-we got ADSL with Wanadoo in early Dec.We can only get 128K as we are too far away for the bigger supply- we are 2 miles from a small town of 1000 people- but this is fine. We are on all the time but every so often( is it every 24 hrs?) we get turned off and have to reconnect,much better than before though!We pay 29.99€ a month.

 

[Jon 1]

Do any French ISP's provide PAYG Broadband?

[Steve MD@+<br >Steve<br ><a target=_blank href="http:www.webvivant.com">www.webvivant.com<a>]

Count yourself lucky. We're in the Orne where the Conseil Générale made a rash promise of 'broadband for all' by the end of 2005. It soon became apparent that this wasn't going to happen, so the CG made a deal with a Wi-Max supplier to fill the gaps. The problem is, there are fairly heavy set-up costs, you have to sign a 3-year deal, and it's still only 1Mbit/s. What's worse, it turns out our house is outside the reception area. Argh! So we're stuck with 64k ISDN for now.

[Mpprh]

Hi

I connected to broadband yesterday using Wanadoo 2mb/s .

It seems OK so far.

This speed test ( http://www.journaldunet.com/vitesse/6540943213/1486/resultat_modem.shtml )

shows speeds varying from 1500 - 1800 kb/s, which is an improvement of my dial up 19 - 30 kb/s ! I'm quite pleased because I'm using quite a long extension lead, which is not recommended.

Our village has 800 people. It is very small, but people on the other side (say 1.5kms away) are limited to 512kb/s

You can check out line lengths etc here : http://www.degrouptest.com/

Bonne chance

Peter