 Poster: A snowHead
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I have an unusual question for this forum, and hope some PdS (or French) locals can help me.
We have holiday property in PdS, as many snowheads do, and we would like to get some basic broadband there. We have spoken to Orange and after an hour call on mobile (and £50 bill for that) we been offered landline and cheapest BB for 52euros a month, which I think is a joke. We are basically after a cheap 1-2Mb line, with a low download limit.
I am wondering what experience other people have, what package at what cost?
Many thanks for any advice
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I pay 29.99 a month for 20mb, TV & landline through Neuf. All done online with minimal hassle.
http://adsl.sfr.fr/
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I pay €24 a month for a half mb line (plus line rental on top of that), with Orange (although set up through France Telecom, all done online). We've had it for a few years now and I really much see what cheaper deals are out there. 1/2 mb is plenty good enough for casual surfing, Skype calls and video-conferencing with family back home. It's one of the best things we installed at our place as it means we can do a bit of work out there, eeking out holiday allowance as much as possible.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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BT3 €0/month
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| davidof wrote: |
| BT3 €0/month |
That sounds like a sensible price! What's the deal?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Thank you for all the replies, it’s very interesting.
Please keep it coming. I am sure it will be interesting to other snowheads too.
davidof, yes great deal, may be too good?
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student, I pay €45 a month and have all inclusive calls to Europe and US and one broadband connexion...
I also have French and UK mobile phones ... the UK one is ******* $^*))* ))*&& &&&% T )((&& EXPENSIVE!
Seriously, all Telecoms in France are roughly 2/3 of UK price ( give or take an exchange rate or 3!) ... more competition allegedly!!
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Bump
Have discovered that we can now get boadband on our French fixed line, and have the usual clutch of confusing offers from Orange. I find it pretty difficult to make sense of broadband, TV etc in English, let alone in French. We don't need TV - we have a satellite dish to get UK TV and our building has just had a TNT aerial fixed, so with a decoder we'll be able to get more French channels.
Ideally, as we are only here about 4 months a year I'd like to be able to switch access on and off and only pay for what I want, but I guess that's a bit optimistic. "Free" calls to the UK would be good too, though I'd certainly want to hang on to a French telecom line - I don't trust these internet phone things 100%, having had nothing but trouble with one in the UK which I eventually got rid of.
There is an Orange offer "sans engagement" but I can't find out much about it. There seems to be no fee to terminate - but it's not clear whether you can just switch it on and off at will.
Has anyone found the ideal formula for an apartment only occupied for 4 months of the year?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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sorry, don't know why this is in trip reports - I found the original thread on a search.... 
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pam w, Not got a place in france but done a lot of work of sales/support etc of ADSL in the UK and previously did some telecoms stuff in France so I've seen bits 'n' pieces. I'm guessing that the services will largely be similar as the tech is pretty much the same. I can't say for certain though whether FT have gone through the same 'wholesale network company' creation as we have done in the UK with the creation of openreach.
It's pretty much unusual for companies to allow you to turn on/off a DSL connection at will. Certainly in the UK there's a service activation fee charged by openreach to the services provider (sky/talk talk etc) of around £34 if my memory serves me corrrectly. You never see this as it's built into their business model. There's then a 'service disconnection fee' which you will get charged if you left a property and didn't go through the change of address process to move your service to another line. I would therefore assume that trying to get an offer 'sans engagement' might be quite hard but feel free to prove me wrong  with a 3g stick you probably could but then you wouldn't get cost effective enough access to snowheads. It does look like they've rolled out what we call in the UK LLU or 'local loop unbundling' which is where the ISP connects your line to them in the local exchange (i.e. closer to you) than much much further along openreach's network - referred to in places as 'zone degroupée' The advantages of LLU is that it allows the ISP to offer more interesting services, cheaper prices and has a greater level of control over your network experience the downside is that it puts up the costs of turning on/off customers so of which may be passed on.
I read this page - http://abonnez-vous.orange.fr/residentiel/comparer-offres-internet.aspx?idnode=90115005 as a summary of the offers, and to that end the Formule looks the best as it's 19.90 for the first 6 months and then 29.90 afterwards. Orange don't seem to do an offer without including TV but there's nothing to say you have to watch it!! I don't understand the tick in the box of phone line as opposed to sans ligne fixed. Does the formule offer include the line rental in which case it looks like a cracking deal for the 1st 6 months and still pretty good thereafter?
Other offers - http://alicebox.fr/alicebox.html http://www.bbox.bouyguestelecom.fr/pid15/les-offres.html - and the bouguyes one seems to be better priced for the Internet Haut Debit. I guess at that pricing you're looking at 240 euro for the year plus your phone line.
Frankly Agenterre is talking bollox about costs in France being less than the UK just not the case at all. There's always been more suppliers, more competition and more de-regulation in the UK rather than France. It's one of the benefits of packing more people into less space. Look at mobile networks - 5 in the UK, 3 in France - not surprising as the cost of running a more geographically dispersed network is much much higher. Internet & Phone in the uk costs me less than £20 per month say around 22 euro - on these offers in France you're looking at paying 36 euro a month or close to 32 quid.
HTH - feel free to PM if you like to followup.
PS - I now understand why the phrase 'we offer you over 200km of pistes' or 'we offer you savoyard specialities' crops up so often in poor Frenc-English translations.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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pam w, We pay 39.56 euros every two months for the FT line and then 24.90 euros a months to Orange for the broadband. This comes out at 44.68 a month.
We have a phone line that only takes incoming calls - just emergency outgoing calls. We did this as we have sometimes let the chalet and like to offer the facility that calls can be accepted but saves any problems over phone bills from other people, or running up large bills ourselves. You can make outgoing calls with a phone card easily available. I usually have one kicking around - just about 5 or 7 euros, but find nowadays that it generally runs out before I use it as we use Skype all the time for outgoing calls ourselves
The chalet tends to be used by us for about 5 months a year and then friends and family for maybe another 2 months - so there are probably 5 or 6 months when it sits there with the phone line and internet not being used. But then we are paying all the time for things like the phone to be connected here at home when we are not there either... having said that we do leave the computer at home on as we need to access that sometimes remotely.
Having made OH go and dig out these bills to answer this question - he now wants me to come up with a solution from here to lower our phone/internet bills so will be interested in everyone else's comments.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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bertie bassett,
Agenterre might not be completely right (especially with regards to mobile costs) but I don't think you are either.
Most of my relatives and friends in France pay €30(£27) or less for BB+phone+tv packages with line rental (not the £32 you suggest). The closest you get to that here is with Virgin and that costs £25 (once line rental is included)but at lower BB speeds and unlimited calls only at WE and no international desitnations. To have a truly comparable package woould be in the region of £34 here... When all my mates started to have those packages in France and very high BB speed, I looked around here see if something as convenient/good was around and the prices tend to be higher..
I do agree that mobiles are cheaper here though (but it used to the reverse when the mobile boom started)
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Kruisler, sounds as if we could definitely be doing better then than our 44.68 euros a month - more research needed.
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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Mouth, that looks good - have passed on - thank you.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Mouth, Did I mention I can pick up the tourist office free WiFi access on my balcony 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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For occasional use has anyone found a good dongle deal on a French network?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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ctskifam, I have an SFR one which came as part of the broadband/phone package. Has a rather small download limit and is pretty slow, but I don't know how it compares with similar widgets.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Hmm. Lots to think about, isnt there? Thanks to all. Mouth, I looked at that last night. I'll have another look. A!t present we use UK mobiles here, almost exclusively for texting. £50 credit last me about a year! The French mobile deals were a pain because they required credit to be used very quickly, or lost. But maybe one of those packages would be worth looking at.
Will keep listening and searching..... 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Lizzard, tarrifs do seem pretty tight on these in France - unlike the UK where the O2 one I bought for the ski show was £20 and you can then cheaply top up for 7 days at a time (irrelevent to this thread but they wanted over £250 for wi-fi access at Olympia - how can that be justified!!).
Will hit google.fr and see what I can find....
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Mouth, that teleconnect service seems to require essentially giving up the France Telecom line - though maybe I've misunderstood. Having had big problems with "VOIP telephony" in the UK I'd be very reluctant to do that, for fear of being left stuck with no working phone line at a critical juncture. With my UK service I could just unplug the damn thing and use my BT line - but it seems that if you do that with teleconnect it costs more, thus negating the point of their service.
Despite all their stuff being in English I still can't really understand what they're going on about.
SFR seem to offer a simple 512K internet service for just under 20 euros a month - and as our phone line will only cope with that speed anyway, that might be the simplest option.
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Mouth, pam w, we had a good look at Teleconnect and then googled it and came up with a forum where it was getting all sorts of flak from people about lack of service, not getting broadband etc etc - so we will stay put for now and perhaps see how you get on. Its really important for us to always have reliable broadband readily available - well not for me as I just waste hours on things like this forum and e mailing etc - but OH needs it for work purposes quite a bit when we are in the chalet.
pam w, you don't have a system in the UK that you can turn on and off do you?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I'd like a 365 day a year service which I could switch between European locations. In future, I suspect, this will be standard - once we have a more competitive market, perhaps.
I really didn't like the tone of the teleconnect pages - especially their "France Telecom" bashing. "We will take care of everything so you don't have to talk to those nasty foreigners". I have had rather good service from France Telecom, as it happens. And I am determined not to surrender a bog standard basic "ligne fixe" - and on closer inspection the SFR offer required that too.
I'm comforted that several posters are paying 30 euros a month. I don't want dongles, jingles, dangles, music or mobiles or 999 TV channels all as crappy as each other. But it seems that there really isn't a "no frills" option. I've not quite given up the hunt.... but almost!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Agenterre wrote: |
Mouth, The France Telecom/Orange service is the same price but gives a bit more afaics.
bertie bassett, I always write bollox. However it can,occasionally, be accurate bollox. My €45 a month includes a mobile all incl. to Europe as well as the other fixed line/broadband services .. and I dont even bother looking for good deals. I would be delighted if anyone in the UK would provide so much for that price ( and I make loads of calls to Europe & the US every day). I actually would sign up tomorrow if you can point to a provider who does. |
Sorry I used the term bollox, looking back on it it comes across as more harsh than I intended - still keeping to the topic in terms of packages I had a quick scout around and found this: -
http://www.talktalk.co.uk/products/broadband £17.74 per month for your line rental of the phone and a broadband service includes unlimited evening/weekend calls to UK Landlines. Free evening/wekeend 0870 and upto 8meg broadband. Chuck in a £2 boost pack and get unlimited calls to USA, Canada, Europe, Ozzie, NZ. Chuck in another £4 to get upto 24meg downloads. So I make that £23.74 or c. 27 euro.
Perhaps we're not comparing apples with apples - I don't quite get your comment "My €45 a month includes a mobile" - does that mean included in your 45 euro you get a mobile phone service or calls to mobile from the fixed line? If its the former then O2 will do you for £10 per month or some 11 euro a deal http://shop.o2.co.uk/sim-only-simplicity which includes 150 minutes and 300 texts.
So even if its the mobile service I'm now at 38 euro vs. your 45 - I appreciate I've 'shopped around to find today's best offer' and you might well be on a deal that's from earlier this year, so I'll stick 10% on my costs to reflect I'm now at 42 give or take. I don't quite see therefore how France is 2/3 the price of the uk?
| Kruisler wrote: |
bertie bassett,
Agenterre might not be completely right (especially with regards to mobile costs) but I don't think you are either.
Most of my relatives and friends in France pay €30(£27) or less for BB+phone+tv packages with line rental (not the £32 you suggest). The closest you get to that here is with Virgin and that costs £25 (once line rental is included)but at lower BB speeds and unlimited calls only at WE and no international destinations. |
I think the TV bit is a bit of a misnomer, but I stand to be corrected. After all BT offers 'tv' as part of it's package but all it is a freeview box that you can get some Iplayer content on. I don't recollect that France had rolled out a cable network in the same that Virgin operates one over here, so I don't understand what TV you get as part of that 30 euro package. If you or one of your buddies could enlighten then that would help the discussion.
So to compare your price - €30 or £27 with the price I had above - ok so we'll drop the international calls boost but keep the 24 meg, and now I'm sitting at £21.74 vs. your £27 and if i want Freeview TV that comes for free down my antennae (apart from the BBC tax but that's in the Tax Fonciere (sp?) as well right?) If I want Iplayer content I get that on my PC without an additional cost
| Agenterre wrote: |
Given that there are so many competitive pressures in the UK then why are prices higher than nasty old France ( even at today's ERs). Just a rip-off from the UK telecoms industry ? - very interested in an expert view. Also very interesting that enhanced capability/bandwidth/services seem to be available in France well before the UK. Is our Telecoms industry that far behind or just another example of exploiting revenues ? On a broader note it just proves that all you need is some competition .. not lots of it, and the concept of de-regulation is a myth.
Anyway there are folks on here needing advise so I'll shut it! : |
I'm still not convinced UK prices are higher, and I quite like France myself
I don't think our telecoms industry is a rip-off but I'm not totally enamoured of Ofcom and some of their decisions, for example they've recently announced a round of price-cuts (whoopie do!) that they are forcing openreach to take and yet the effect (for consumers) will be a zero reduction in line rental costs, but a decent reduction in the costs of putting in new lines - of course we all do that every week don't we! They also seem to take 'lowest common denominator' of customers as their reference point when devising strategies to counter consumer harm - surely if you're sitting there dialling a premium rate number every 5 minutes for some slebs voting line then you should expect it to cost you at the end of the month.
As to whether capability/bandwidth/services are behind those of France then quite possibly, after all France had minitel miles before the UK had anything 'equivalent'  there again BT was floated 4 years before France Telecom (now Orange) and as you might imagine those French government protectionist subsidies raised their heads again with FT as recently as 2004. Of course if the uk had been funding their telco until then and BT had not run away in the 90's in a pointless orgasm of becoming the 'worlds telco'; such deals having been expensively unwound in the noughties to pay off the debts, then we might have a network that doesnt creak at the edges when you get a bit of rain. We only need to look at S. Korea where most residential homes are served by 100mbps broadband for less than 50$ per month to see what can be achieved by a focused government working with their industries to deliver game-changing capabilities for their citizens (he says in his best 'power to the people voice')
| pam w wrote: |
| SFR seem to offer a simple 512K internet service for just under 20 euros a month - and as our phone line will only cope with that speed anyway, that might be the simplest option. |
Sounds like a good idea to me.
| pam w wrote: |
I'd like a 365 day a year service which I could switch between European locations. In future, I suspect, this will be standard - once we have a more competitive market, perhaps.
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I think you're always going to have to pay to have a line in place in a given premises and then some more for some broadband on top of it. I'll have a bit more of a look around and Voip providers for you - not necessarily to ditch your land-line service but to run alongside. For example you could then have a UK number that rings in your place in Les Saisses so if your kids want to call you from their mobiles it won't cost them a bean as it would come out of their free minutes. Similarly (depending on the tariff) you could pickup the voip phone and ring them on their UK land-line for nothing. Or just use skype between the laptop and their PC and you don't need to worry about tariffs at all!!
Is it time to go skiing yet?
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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pam w, this documant brought to you by Xenophobia Central. Good lord, imagine having support services and terms and conditions in French, how outrageous.
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| bertie bassett wrote: |
As to whether capability/bandwidth/services are behind those of France then quite possibly, after all France had minitel miles before the UK had anything 'equivalent' |
Not true. Prestel predated Minitel by three years. Of course Minitel was largely used for those 3615 sex pages and paying 30 francs in call charges to book your SNCF tickets.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Here in Tignes we're with SFR on a bb+inclusive calls to loads of countries package. Approx €32 pcm.
We get about 8mb speed but that all really depends on your location.
For mobiles, we use a sim only deal with www.lefrenchmobile.com, as you don't lose your credit
(subject to a monthly fee of €1.40 if your monthly consumption is less than €10).
Great if you have kids and want to give them a phone but control it's spend.
Free €10 of calls for both the referrer and new customer. Feel free to use my number (PM me)
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FAQ
