Broadband issues!
 

Hi Everyone,

Hoping to find some urgent help on here please. We spent all last week looking at French properties and found a wonderful house which we have had an accepted offer on. However we run our business from home and having been assured that there is broadband we have been told by France telecom today that there is no broadband to the house or to the village. Our only option is to have the internet via a satellite package. We need a good broadband connection. Can anyone tell me if this system has worked well for them and how slow/fast has it been?Many thanks. Patrick

Re: Broadband issues!
 

If you happen to be in Brittany there is a very knowledgeable Brit who has a been installing satellite systems for absolutely ages, he's called Barty and if you google something like Barty satellite Brittany I'm sure you'll find him. Even if you're not in Brittany he'd probably be happy to answer your questions.
Hopefully other posters with personal experience will be along soon, but I detect a note of panic in your post...
Hope you get the answers you want, welcome to the forum and best of luck with setting up your business here and all the rest of the move.
:welcome:

Re: Broadband issues!
 

I am sorry to hear your village does not yet get broadband. You may want to double check using La couverture ADSL en France

The Ariase site provides a list of all the French telecom exchanges and what services they support. It can be useful in confirming the information provided by Orange, aka France Telecom.

Once you know the technical name of your exchange, more information is available at https://www.free-reseau.fr/

Hopefully others will be along soon with satellite specific experience.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

We have virtually no broadband/ or mobile telephone signal so, 18months ago installed a satellite system through a very reliable local company. We get a reasonable service, except if there is heavy rain.

However we only have so mush use permonth and to buy extra is very expensive. as we found out when a Windows update decided to install itself without warning and used up most of that month's allowance

Re: Broadband issues!
 

If it's available in your area, and from your location, try wimax, as supplied, in my case, by Ozone. Not particularly cheap, but it works, is fast, and unlimited. I also have Nordnet satellite, as a back-up. Together, they are an expensive way to get on the internet. but here, there's no other choice.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Personally if I were you I would retract the offer on the house you have 7 days to retract from receiving the paperwork in the post. You can then revaluate villages based on what kind of broadband infrastructure they have. Wimax service for areas that have no wired broadband are limited plenty of rural places have reasonable broadband and fibre is being rolled out to a fair few. We are in the arse end on no where and have 20Mb haut debit and Fibre is coming to us next year.


You can shift here 1 km and go from no broadband to reasonably fast connection so all is not lost.....

Re: Broadband issues!
 

We were told that broadband was coming next year - in 2006.

Having got wimax, and the original problems ironed out, and also satellite, I removed the land-line link completely three years ago, and saved the rental.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Broadband was a deal breaker for me. I also work from home and I wouldn't have bought anywhere where I couldn't have broadband.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Me too..... being a Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent engineer.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

I'd pull out of the deal.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Hi
We inherited satellite broadband when we brought here in Lot et Garonne. Generally, download speed varies between slow and so slow as to be unusable. A phase of fast upload time 2 weeks ago took us by surprise, uploaded all my wife’s pictures, used all our monthly 40 gb allowance and so cut us off from internet until Nov 1st.
We are trying territoire sans fil, aka skydsl, next week. I understand this is some sort of radio service....uses a 20 cm dish...
We are rural and cannot get broadband on the phone line.
Be very careful if your business is internet dependent.
Peter

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Tried SkyDSL in the early days - it was, of course, expensive, and a hybrid system, then - dial-up upload, satellite download. Probably an entirely different system, now.

What you describe sounds like wimax - long-distance wifi (about 20 Km range, from the transmitter). Small antenna and receiver combined in one external box, from off which you can hang your own home wifi network.

I regularly get 5 Mbs down, and just about half a meg up. It suffices, until suddenly it's not there. Typically French customer service...

Of course, there are now 4G boxes available, if you have 4G transmission nearby... (check on your mobile).

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Check on your mobile. What mobile? There is absoluetly no signal here. My family didn't believe us until they checked with their mobiles last time they were here,

Re: Broadband issues!
 

We recently spent about 3 months in France in 4 different locations. I work online and my experience was that outside of bigger towns internet is either non-existent or abysmal. I even tried one of those dongles that you rent for weeks/days etc....also nigh on useless.

I´m so glad that we had that experience as the lack of reliable internet was one of the factors that helped us to decide to not move to France!

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Since the 10th Oct, numerous companies in Seine-Maritime, Normandy have been faced with huge logistical difficulties due to problems with an important tel & internet provider. As a result they've had to temporarily suspend all activity and have staff stand -down. Link HERE
Extremely harmful when ones activity depends on the tel or internet.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

We re-located back to France from Singapore some 15 years ago, knowing that we'd have very few problems in the countryside location planned on.

One can be surprised at the excellent tel. & internet experience on the outskirts of some small places. Here in the SW, we are surrounded by vineyards about a mile or two outside a small town (pop: approx 1.4K). Internet is super-rapid, downloads appear at lightning speed. We're with one of the largest if not the largest provider, and have been for the past 15 years; can't remember the last time we had a problem. Totally satisfied. Mme TP opts for a brand new mobile phone from them every 2nd year for about 10euros. Although I'm a lover of new and all interesting technology, I never carry a phone (can't stand the things), but do carry one in the car in case of emergencies - haven't used it in ages; keep it topped up with a LeClercMobile paycard - believe it's 5e/month. Again, totally satisfied!

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Lucky ou is all I can say.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

For a couple of years between 2013 and 2015 we lived on our sail boat in the French med between Agde and somewhere past Porquerolles. On my nephew's advice I bought a Huawei mobile hotspot device for around £40. I also bought an additional aerial that could be plugged into the back since we have a steel boat and the signal bellow could diminish and I could stick it out of a porthole. I bought a data only sim with one of the big providers (I can't remember which off hand, but could find out) on a monthly contract that I shouldn't really have had since my address was a marina that I left. It did everything we needed. We weren't running a business, but we could watch videos without them buffering, download our subscription newspapers, books, organise flights, read and send emails etc. I can't remember a time when it didn't work. It was explained to me that the reception and tethering capabilities of a mobile hotspot are greater than a smartphone since they are designed to do one job only. I would hate for the first person who tries this on my say so to prove me wrong. All I can say is I am bringing it with me next year when we cruise the canals in the SW, house hunting, and assume it's going to work as it has.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

Satellite is not the only option. Depending on your region I would first look at mobile coverage using 3G or 4G before going down the satellite route.

If you have a reasonably stable 3G signal it can be adequate for daily tasks such as mail and occasional updates to a website or surfing. If you are lucky enough to be in a 4G area then speed is dependent on your provider. There are special modems for this. You pop in a SIM card which is linked to your mobile account and away you go.

There are Wi-Fi options available that go under different names. Basically you will use an external antenna to link up to another transmitter someplace that there is a broadband connection. Speeds vary according to suppliers as mentioned above.

Re: Broadband issues!
 

As another data point, we are enjoying better Internet speeds in our village than in the centre of Lyon.

That said, we avoided upgrading from copper to fibre in the city because we heard the service was similar due to congestion. Had we stayed longer in Lyon, we would have upgraded to fibre for reliability more than speed.

In 3eme, Lyon, a mobile 4G connection fluctuated between 5 and 70 Mbps download depending on the time of day. Uploads ranged from 1 to 10 Mbps.

In our village, a mobile 4G connection is consistent at a symmetric 10 Mbps. The speed feels capped.

In Lyon, we got ~35 Mbps via a copper landline and in the village ~55 Mbps.

So the move for us from city to rural France has landed us with a better Internet connection!

Before buying our land and building, I made sure the telecom exchange we were on was degrouped and had VDSL as a service. The links in my earlier post provide all the exchange information.

For maps of mobile coverage in France, see https://www.monreseaumobile.fr

All that said, it took eighteen months for Orange to install our landland. Patience continues to be a requirement. ;)

Re: Broadband issues!
 

If you have a reasonably stable 3G signal it can be adequate for daily tasks such as mail and occasional updates to a website or surfing. If you are lucky enough to be in a 4G area then speed is dependent on your provider. There are special modems for this. You pop in a SIM card which is linked to your mobile account and away you go.

We don't have a stable 2G connection and following extensive enquiries had to conclude that satellite IS our only option.