Internet connection
 

My family and i are moving to France in April. My son who is 10 years old plays xbox on line with his friends who are in England. I am thinking of buying a dongle from England to allow for internet connection, i have been told it is cheaper than buying one in France. Does anybody have any suggestions that would keep costs down to a minimum, i wish to pay for 1 to 2 years contract up front and have no limit to the amount of gb that he can use.

Re: Internet connection
 

Hi
Internet connections are not as good as in the UK for many areas of France.
If you are buying a dongle then I assume that you want access to 3G or hotspots.
You better check that you can get reception wherever you are moving to.
Internet speed is ok in towns but sometimes not so good in villages or in the country.
Check out the services and prices on websites like EE; SFP; Bouygues; Free or the supermarkets like Auchan or Carrefour.
You can see the prices for the dongles on these sites.
Many (all) the internet boxes provide broadband and free phonecalls to the UK and other countries (VOIP) and tv plus wifi for the house.
Good luck with your move.

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Is there a reason why you are not getting good old wired broadband "Haut Debit"? you don't to pay line rental here for ADSL and can have a Voip phone connected to it which allows for free calls to landlines in most places around the globe.

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Thanks for that, it sounds good. I am moving to a tiny village near St. Junien in the haute vienne region, so connection will probably be poor whatever.
The problem i have is that my son tends to use more than we have with bt, it costs us extra, i know, i need to monitor the time he spends on xbox live. I just need the cheapest option.
Thanks for your responses.

Re: Internet connection
 

ADSL is pretty good here in rural areas in comparison to the UK, even here in a hamlet of 5 houses we have adsl, lowest speed admittedly, but they have installed fibre optics, so maybe sometime soon it will improve. Have you checked to see what coverage you have?

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I have not checked, not sure how to do that to be honest.

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Many thanks for that

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tij - as you know where you are moving to the link above will assist, but also think about contacting the Marie's office - language accepted as a possible issue - they can tell you, or do you know anyone where you are moving to already? Can your immobilier assist you? Random thoughts from a bad head .... ;)

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Unlike in the UK French ISP contracts are truly unlimited so that at least should not be a concern.

I'd forget all about dongles, especially from the UK, for what you want they will cost you a fortune.

I know of no service which you can pay upfront for.

Despite what others have said many places in France are stuck on less than 2mb connections with effectively zero prospect of improvement in the foreseeable future.

Satellite systems are an alternative but they generally are capped, check it out here:

http://www.bigdishsat.com/broadband/...?td_type=costs

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Thank you very much for the advice, i will talk to friends over there and also the Marie.

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For what it is worth, we moved 10 years ago to a tiny mountain village with our 14 year old autistic son who at the time was completely addicted to his computer and played all sorts of stuff online constantly. We had the same concerns as you have right now. They turned out not to be an issue. ADSL had just arrived up here, we signed up straight away. The speed has been more than enough, the service excellent. Initially we signed with Orange and are now with SFR.

Other good news is that our son gradually came out of this phase of his life and now enjoys the computer in a more 'normal' way!

Good luck with the move.

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I've just moved house, (new build), and I very nearly didn't get an ADSL line as there are apparently none left in he village !!!:confused: Orange said they couldn't, SFR were hopeless and in the end it was only Free who could open up a line for us. Bloody appalling broadband in this country...
However, I wasn't too keen on satellite as I wasn't sure how it would be affected during bad weather and it's also quite pricey. I very nearly had the WIBOX installed which transmits internet via the mobile phone relays. Apparently its very good, but as I said Free came to the rescue so I didn't bother. Having said that its a 2mega connection (average 1,3mega and sometimes even slower), so I might just get the Wibox after all as they announce speeds of up to 100mega

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Internet seems very expensive in France.

I have just had satelite internet connected in UK and it has been great - £60 installation, including the modem, and £22 per month unlimited. I have 56mbps and have only had 1 outage so far for a few hours during the past 3 months. Also the aerial is on the top of the roof and just a small square box on a mast, not a huge dish.

The dreadful storms we have had in Sussex recently have not affected the supply at all.

Re: Internet connection
 

Posts: 194


Thanks for this, very helpful. Cupoftea, I am glad your sons "phase" has passed. I dont want my son to miss out on his xbox live, i would find it too quite without his shouting and throwing the controllers around.

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I think these things are very important to our boys. I didn't like it at the time, I didn't like the nature of the games that he played, or how much it isolated him. But he needed it, it gave him somewhere to go which helped him to calm down. In his electronic world he felt safe. It was especially imortant at the time of the move and in the months that followed. Since then he has had some excellent specialist help and all these years later is living almost independently and works full time.

I wish you all the luck in the world for your move, hope it all works out well for you and your son.

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Wouldn't it be easier to encourage your child to leave the house and venture outdoors? I'm sure the exercise and social interaction would benefit him more than playing X-box.

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Honestly you should be making sure the phalange's are installed correctly on the A320 :blink:

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Yes Tafster 101 the poster didn't ask for opinions on child rearing but on internet recommendations.

Walk a mile in her shoes for 1 day!

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My sentiments entirely.

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Have you confirmed that Wibox is available at your actual address ?

If Orange said that there were no ADSL connections available that suggests that you are connected to a very small rural exchange where they have limited space for installing the equipment required to provide it, not uncommon.

The is a connundrum though because if FREE were able to supply you that implies that the exchange is degroupee but typically 3rd party ISP's are not normally interested in such small potential markets and even if they were in this case how is it that there is room for their equipment but not for Orange ?

What is the NRA number for your exchange, DSLValley will give it to you.

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What no-one has mentioned on this thread is that playing games over the internet does not require a very high speed (1MB is fine for Xbox Live) but it does require the very low latency which ADSL usually provides. For this reason 3G would be pretty hopeless and satellite would be unplayable.

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Yes, the WIBOX was available, (and they say its available to anyone who lives in a +/- radius of 20km from a mobile phone antenne), but I was limited to 8mega (they claim it can be up to 100mega but not in my case) - I very nearly had it installed but its a pricy installation and they send a technicien to install it. Once its up and running though the monthly subscription is on a par with other internet offers. Then Free said "OK" so I opted for a tradition ASDL line. Wish I hadn't now....

Apparently my NRA number is DOL39??

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Services listed as available RIGHT HERE and a better break down HERE It is a degroupage NRA "Exchange"

Have you done the broadband line test to see what that says is available if you have a land line? or a neighbour with one HERE

Also I remembered that in our region if you can't have wired haut debit then you can have a 500 euro grant towards satellite broadband installation I forget how to apply for it or if it is available in your region

More info here

Re: Internet connection
 

Hi

Yes did all that and apparently I can have unto 2mega but in reality its really 512k. It isn't brilliant compared to before I moved.
I'm not eligible for a grant unfortunately.
I'm told that I'd get a better speed with the satellite than with the Wibox, but I'm still not sure if its reliable or not. We get Freesat via satellite and during bad weather this all goes to pot but I don't mind in a way because I'm not paying a monthly subscription for that. If the internet goes down because of snow/wind and I'm paying about 50euros/month then I'm not going to be a happy chappy.

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You should be ok if you pick a provider with a good spot footprint for France or your area as they do vary. In serious downpours we loose our wired broadband it drops out of sync due to a fault I can see where it happens but getting Orange to agree with me is proving a challenge. Im wishing I still had the keys to my BT van:frown:

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I assume you dont have children, x-box or playstation is almost a religion to kids these days

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Can you explain that.....sorry I guess I'm getting a little dim :lol:

Now why doesn't that surprise me :rolleyes:

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Fast internet by satellite can only come from KA-Sat and like all satellites it's footprint is fixed and totally out with the control of any ISP meaning that there is nothing to choose between them on a coverage basis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA-SAT

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The OP's son wants to play Xbox Live so they don't need a high-speed internet connection, they need a low-latency internet connection. As I mentioned in my previous post, 3G is marginal for game-play and satellite would be hopeless.

The attached article explains:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag_(online_gaming)

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Ahem as has been mentioned if you have a KA-Sat based service low latency is not an issue the refractive index of microwave transmission is lower than fibre optics and thus the latency is lower.

If the engineers applied themselves they could cook an egg on your head:D

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I understand your logic but you are forgetting about the distances involved when sending data via satellite. Latency is measured over the round trip (what we called ACK/NAK when I was in comms):-

House -> Satellite
Satellite -> ISP
ISP -> Satellite
Satellite -> House

Here is some simple maths. The satellite will be at around 36,000km. Multiply it by 4 for a full round trip and you get 144,000km. Now divide this by the speed of light and you get 480ms. This is pure travelling time, then you need to add hardware latency and the latency between the ISP and whichever server you're trying to reach. In other words you'll be in the low 500's at best.

Unfortunately 500ms is way too slow for online gaming.

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Whatever....

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Blimey this thead is getting à bit too technical événements for the liés offre me....:confused:
But thanks for all help given concerning my particular case :)

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Maybe a silly question, but is there any possibility in using a "clé 4G" for the home and therefore bypassing any need for ADSL?

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I have always found that if you get the angle of the dangle wrong then you are banjaxed!:blink:

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Yes definitely. In theory both the speed (up to 100mbit/s) AND the latency (less than 20ms) should be better than ADSL so gaming over 4G ought to be fine. It remains to be seen what the networks deliver though!

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Not an issue but it again will be a location location location for speed, We have a mast close to us which is also near a school and at peak hours they throttle it down to edge "GSM Slow" connections for lower tariff customers, it's common practice ;)

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Ok, So if I get this I can, in theory get 4G on all appliances in the home?

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The product looks great and yes of course it will do exactly what you suggest. It's the equivalent of a personal hotspot on your mobile phone. Not sure what forfait you need to get with it - cost per month, Gb per month etc. You also need to know what coverage you will get in your area. But very interesting and if you get one do tell us all how it works out.