WHAT??? Could you spare any? What is VDSL?
DSL in general means “Digital Subscriber Line”.
ADSL - the A here is Asymmetric (as the upstream and downstream speeds differ) - originally up to 8Mbps, then ADSL2 which was up to 24Mbps
VDSL - the V is “Very High Speed”, typically up to 80Mbps
g.fast a development of VDSL which (in theory) can achieve speeds of 1Gbps.
All get slower the longer your phone line - ADSL can be stretched up to 7km in some situations but the speeds available oon such long lines might easily be less than 1Mbps, VDSL stretches to perhaps 1km but is best on lines shorter than 500m and g.fast in theory stretches out to about 500m (at speeds around 100Mbps) but, again, is better on lines less than about 2-300m.
I’d happily share bandwidth but you would have to be within reach of the Wi-Fi signal - so, given the usual thick French stone walls, pretty much inside the house.
@anon88169868 - do you know if FTTH is available in France?
We had it in UK, we had options up to 1Gb up & down.
In France we have about 1.5mb/256kb - which bizarrely works OK for normal web browsing and streaming. At some point we are due to get VDSL but I may switch to Bouygues 4g in the meantime.
Certainly Orange have a range of offerings - I think broadly speaking if VDSL is available FTTH is also available.
Sorry @paul I meant FTTP where the actual fibre optic cable arrives at the house rather than just a phone line. I don’t think I have seen it here “out in the sticks”.
Apparently it is coming
FTTH=Fibre to the Home; FTTP = Fibre to the Premises so the same thing.
I can get FTTP/H at our French address - Orange have a couple of products up to 2Gbps.
I very nearly ordered it but, truth be told, I really don’t need even 400Mbps in the holiday home.
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You appear to be answering a question that I didn’t ask. I haven’t commented on the different broadband providers and the ability to use VOIP but was talking about fixed line analog calls. That service which has traditionally been provided by Orange is being phased out.
My Orange broadband package allowed me to make inclusive VOIP calls worldwide although we only tended to use it for calls to France, the USA and the U.K. I certainly wouldn’t have paid an extra €20 or so a month to cover the handful of days over several years when the VOIP was unavailable. For emergencies we always had our mobile phones.
We are still getting used to the novelty of having a mobile phone signal in our village thanks to the new 4G mast that was erected 3 months ago. Previous to that, the mobile was something we just left in the car for emergencies. Now that we can actually use it indoors it is probably time to re-evaluate our arrangements. I shall have to enquire as to what phone provision is available through our livebox.
You are obviously rich enough to pay for an extra phone line, lucky you. Orange is withdrawing this service in the near future and all their customers will use VOIP even if they do not have access to the Internet through a Livebox. When this happens I suggest that however rich you are you do not subscribe to the new pseudo fixed line as it will offer you nothing more than your current VOIP provision.
At the moment if you have an Orange Ligne Fixe and A/VDSL on top then dropping the POTS1 line just means your monthly charge drops by the (I think) 17.99€ that they charge for the service - leaving the VOIP offering “free”.
1] Plain Old Telephone ServiceQuite right Dan, I misunderstood your original statement!
So what I should have answered was ‘history and inertia.’
When we first came here, we were on dial-up with a modem card in a desktop PC. We only connected for about 20 minutes at a time to send and receive emails and do occasional browsing or download updates and applications. So it made no sense to pay money to connect to the Internet just to make a phone call.
With the advent of Broadband, it just seemed like an advance in computer technology. We bought our own router and got improved Internet access. VOIP was in it’s infancy and was not regarded as particularly reliable. At that time it was still normal to turn computers off when not in use, so making a VOIP call would not be as simple as just picking up the fixed line phone.
Getting around to deciding to to give up the fixed line service was not simple.
Because of our remote location, a fixed line that still works when the electricity goes off (quite often) is worth having, especially for old folks.
Our dégroupage status means that the cheapest offers are not available to us.
Our old house has massive internal stone walls that makes it difficult to get WiFi access in all areas and it is also impossible to hear a telephone ring in another room. So the Bouygues box has to go in an upstairs bedroom to get maximum coverage. Our old internal wiring that enabled us to use fixed phones in different locations is redundant. We now use a cordless phone with an extension to be able to receive and make calls in other parts of the house.
All this to save around 60 Euros a year plus free local calls. (We use Localphone to get virtually free international calls.)
Really, none of this makes much sense. Convergence has resulted in almost everything being available on a smartphone.
Young people just don’t understand why we need all that junk. I just tell them you can’t drop a desktop down the toilet and lose everything!
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Unusually I don’t understand what you are getting at.
The fixed line is being replaced by a ‘box’ which will provide VOIP calls but not an internet connection.
If you have just a telephone line and no internet then, yes, you need a box to make your existing phone(s) work.
In this case (no Internet) the physical line into your house will become an Internet line (probably ADSL as huge bandwidth is not needed but decent reach will be essential) and the box will consist of an xDSL modem and ATA (analogue terminal adapter) and a little embedded computer to make them talk to each other. You won’t be able to use the Internet part as an Internet connection though.
If, however you have internet (most people) and you are still paying for a ligne fixe then the line into the house carries phone and xDSL and you use an xDSL filter to split them apart.
If both phone and internet are with Orange the internet will connect to a Livebox - on the back, whether you subscribe to VOIP or not is an RJ11 phone socket.
If you say to Orange - I’d like to cancel my ligne fixe and use the port on the Livebox they will disconnect your line from the phone system, leave it connected to the Internet and activate the RJ11.
You will save the extra they they charge for the ligne fixe and carry on paying for the internet so effectively the phone is free at that point - so no need to be rich to subscribe to it.
Orange sell phone only or Internet+phone - they do not do “naked Internet” (i.e Internet without telephony) so there isn’t a discount to be had for not having telephony from them.
How it works with unbundled providers I don’t know.
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Why are you telling me what I already know? Your technical explanation is unnecessary.
Because you quoted my comment and said “Unusually I don’t understand what you are getting at” leaving me to think that, er, you didn’t understand what I was getting at.
Never mind
One, or both of us is clearly confused 
Confused is correct. I understood what you wrote but not why you were writing it. I was just trying to point out, probably clumsily, that those who have been happy to pay a lot of money for a belt and braces phone system to have a fixed line in reserve if their VOIP is out of service soon will not be able to. The new ‘phone only’ service will not be a fixed line but a VOIP system that will be subject to the same problems as a Livebox.
We started in the Correze twelve years ago, with dial-up - and were promised that ADSL would be here the following year, by the current owners at the time. It never happened.
I then “graduated” to Sky DSL, which was a hybrid satellite/download, landline upload system. It was a bit quicker, but not much.
We then got wimax through Ozone, and apart from a period of 52 days in 2011 when there was no service due to lightning proximity damage to the receiver (and a situation in which Ozone were totally unhelpful).
Cancelled with them, and obtained a new box and service through Numeo (who later assimilated Ozone…).
The service, when it’s working is good, stable and unlimited, and has steadily increased in speed down the intervening years. Starting originally at about 1 mb/sec, it now sometimes attains 12 Mbs!
However, it is totally unreliable, and often fails for hours (and sometimes days) on end.
As a precaution, I installed a Nordnet satellite system (bought, rather than rented the dish and receiver), which is reasonably quick, but the latency is slow. At least when wimax misbehaves, I have an alternative.
Together, they are costing the best part of 100 Euros per month, which is unsustainable.
They are promising fibre within “X” years, and 4G is unavailable here, so we are stuffed, and destined to stay with what we have for the unforeseeable future.
Wow 100 euros!
A shame that one of these wont work:
I agree. Unfortunately, there’s no Bouygues signal at all, here!