Hi I am new to the forum and live in Sussex UK and newly retired, well me anyway OH a bit older. I hope everyone is coping with the new lockdown arrangements and that it quickly has the desired effect.
We brought a petit maison secondaire late 2019, in Aude, between Caunes Minervois and Peyriac. We thought at first we’d cope with just using mobile data via our phones but for a variety of reasons we now want to set up a proper internet connection and contract.
We discovered a TV aerial on our last visit but there’s nothing else and we don’t want to install an external dish. This is complicated by the fact that our french is improving but basic and we are not at all techy.
Does anyone have any advice please? I understand Orange have a dedicated line for English speakers.
I wondered if anyone could help with any advice. Someone has already mention an apple tv box, which we are now thinking would be useful.
We are primarily concerned with a decent internet connection for bits of research, whatsapp and the odd film on netflix.
We hope to be able to travel down as soon as possible after May 17th.
Hello Sarah, welcome to Survive France. No doubt there will be someone along soon with much more knowledge, but just to let you know, until recently we had an internet connection that gave us 2mb on a good day. Even so, it was decent enough to let us watch Netflix with no problems and to watch videos etc on Youtube, google etc. We now have fibre and get 400mb and I’m not really sure why we need it!
So, in fact don’t be too deterred by what other people say in terms of what is a “decent” speed.
Good luck with all this.
If so put the number into https://www.degrouptest.com which will give you an idea of expected speed and available operators.
If you are very rural speeds might well be low and not much more choice than Orange. But you might be lucky enough to be in an area where fibre is available.
If you don’t have a phone number, use that of a close neighbour.
Hi Sarah and welcome to SF
Have you checked out the orange.fr site to see what speed you can get from an ADSL connection or whether you are eligible at your French location for a Fibre connection?
Where internet speeds are not good using a landline, Bouygues and Orange (specifically) offer a 4G connection and you can check availablity on their respective sites.
There is a thread on Bouygues here which might help… Review Home Internet - 4G Box from Bouygues Telecom
If you don’t currently have a phone on site, if you know a neighbours number you could always use that or if close to shops or other facilities “borrow” their number. In some cases, just your address will suffice.
The https://www.degrouptest.com is a good reference point.
Good luck.
Hi Paul, thank you for responding. We don’t have a landline and won’t be able to borrow anyone else’s until we manage to get back down. I suspect it will be Orange as we’re in a tiny village, though quite close to to other large places.
Thanks for the info Graham. i think it might be ASDL as I remember being told that Orange was the only coverage. I will see if I can work out availability from their site.
Yes it is so wonderful, surrounded by vineyards with lots of lake and river swimming and the sea only a little over an hour away. We feel very, very lucky. Where are you based?
We’re in Lot - very far from the sea. We have been down to the Minervois many times. It can rain a lot in Aude (not Lot), and be very windy, but that’s not too hard to bear. You’re also reasonable close to Spain, which is a plus.
4G is designed for areas where there is poor or little ADSL coverage… so don’t discount testing out Boutgues or Orange just on that basis… The Bouygues offering is a better - unlimited whereas Orange is 200Gb IIRC
If you do go ahead with orange - it is possible to get just ADSL (broadband) without a land-line.
We have just got an Internet service from Orange (€24.99 +€3.99 per month) but no phone service.
For phone we use voip which works perfectly well and we were able to retain our old UK phone number and also get a French phone number. We had this before we moved to France - at that time we could bring our UK phone with us on trips and retain full communication for work etc.
Voilà Graham, you set me off investigating the etymologie…
Beaucoup de racines gauloises ont donné des noms de lieux ou des noms propres. C’est le cas d’un adjectif gaulois/celte, qui est “ollo” et qui signifie “grand”. Ce “ollo”, sous l’influence des Romains qui vont ramener leur latin, va devenir “oldo” puis “oldo” va se transformer en “olto”, puis…Olt, tout simplement; Voir des lieux comme St Laurent d’Olt, St Geniez d’Olt (en Aveyron, 40 kms à l’est de Rodez), ou St Côme d’Olt. Quelques siècles plus tard, au moment où le mot “celto/gaulois/latin” passe dans le vieux-français, se produit un phénomène lingusitique qu’on appelle une “métathèse”, une inversion de lettres (souvent des consonnes) due à des questions un peu complexes de prononciation, et on va passer de “olt” à…“lot”, ce qui va nous donner le nom de la rivière qui se jette dans la Garonne et le département du même nom.
Thanks again Graham. I will definitely investigate both.
Fleur, We’ve not had the house long and have only spent about a total of 6 months in different trips there so maybe we’ve just been lucky with the weather, bits of rain to be sure but not noticed wind. We’re almost exactly on the border with Herault. I think we might just miss that notorious triangle of wind that sweeps past Toulouse and Carcassonne through to the coast or maybe it’ll get us sometime soon. If we ever get back down that is.
Mat, that sounds the deal of the century! Thank you!
Can i make a suggestion? Don’t rush in. Ask your neighbours or the local mairie about mobile and internet/broadband/fibre speeds.
Some rural places have really poor service and low speeds. Overall you may be lucky as for quite a bit of geography Orange could be the best or even only.
Why I’m urging be careful is I have the impression you might not be here fulltime for a while, and customer service and consumer protection and remedies don’t always seem to work in the same way as we might be used to in England. So extricating yourself from a contract or getting something fixed at a distance can be much, much more difficult.
Depending how much data you need my French roofer told me to look at sosh.fr. It is Orange’s low cost arm and you can terminate easily anytime.
