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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

http://www.ariase.com

Many thanks for that

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 ....

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

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

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.

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 !!! 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

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.

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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.