It’s been cropping up a lot on various FB sites - normally in response to when we get fibre in … and I know prices dropped recently. It’s pricey for me so never looked much further - but I’m not running my business these days so…
100MBs is rough average reported speeds for it outside of the Musk fanboys - dropping to 50 if lots of people have it locally.
Ah! The actual numbers are crucial to me. I have been trawling thru’ my per monthlies and chipping away at them in order to make the inevitable additional bung that will do me a basic medical mute.
It struck me, on a thread recently discussing medical mutes and such, that the discussion would simply not be happening in UK.
A pal, long time res of Lot & Garronne, went down with a h/a whilst on hols with family in Glouc. "I woke up in I.C.U. a non-smoker … "
Total treatment, stents, the full Monty, annual check-ups … sin dinero. There did come a point, some years down the line, when the hospital in Cheltenham said, “I think we should now pass you into the hands of your local health service”
Ugh, I feel your pain. We’ve been waiting for years for Orange to make fibre available in our town. Bizarrely they initially deployed it in many villages surrounding the town we live in. Then when they finally did start they deployed it very randomly, not prioritising the most densely populated streets.
It was recently made available for our house so I immediately signed up. Their engineers came and, after several failed attempts, gave up and left us without fibre or ADSL. They’re coming back again on Tuesday to try yet again… Fingers crossed it works this time.
Hello, we are in 37 - Val De Loire Fibre were in charge of putting our fibre in and did so around 18-24 months ago. We then received an info leaflet in letterbox advising that we should be able to connect. We booked an RDV with Orange to do this. But unfortunately our neighbour (a new build property, built since the planning of the fibre) took our connection (we think lied and used our address but that is another story!) so we were left as the only house in the village without access to fibre. Orange told us there was nothing they could do, it was not possible to take our box back now it had been connected to the neighbour, and it was up to the Fibre installer to deal with it.
Thankfully we have a helpful marie who wrote to Centre Val de Loire fibre to request a new connection for our house - this was back in December last year. We received confirmation from the Marie that a connection has been installed recently for our neighbour and we will all now be able to connect to fibre via the correct connections - it’s now on my list to speak to Orange and get it sorted!
I guess what I am trying to say, is maybe it’s worth it to go back to the marie to find out who installed / is installing the fibre in your commune (ie who Orange have deployed) and ask them to contact them to try to expedite your connection.
Here is the email the mairie got from the Val de Loire fibre that they forwarded on to me… maybe this guy can help you find your fibre people…
Bonjour,
Dans le cadre du suivi de mes demandes en cours, je viens de constater la création effective d’un numéro “NEIGHBOURS ADDRESS” sur le serveur d’éligibilité de notre délégataire Val de Loire Fibre.
Cela signifie que Orange devrait pouvoir à présent raccorder tout le monde à la fibre optique dans le secteur, si ce n’est déjà fait, chacun à la bonne adresse…
Je ferme ce dossier mais je reste à votre écoute en cas de souci.
Cordialement,
Frédéric LE BENOIST
Chargé d’affaires FttH pour l’Indre-et-Loire
Syndicat Mixte Ouvert “Val de Loire Numérique”
Tél. : 02 4731 4323 (bureau Tours)
Port. : 06 4830 9909
PS on starlink - a friend back in the UK uses Starlink - he is a surgeon and lives in deepest darkest Sussex - during the pandemic he needed fast connection and good resolution to look at xrays and scans on his computer at home and their internet wasn’t up to scratch. He installed starlink and apparently it did the trick.
Thanks for the advice Melsie.
ive emailed the Maire and this was there response( below)…so we will see…
I have looked at the website you mention, but they didnt install in our area - however I hope the Maire may be able to forward onto the right people.
ill keep you all posted as to the outcome.
Bonjour Monsieur,
Demande bien reçue et transmise ce jour au service concerné.
Une réponse vous parviendra prochainement.
Cordialement.
Pour le Maire, Luc LOUIS,
L’Adjoint Administratif,
Carole POUYADOUX.
Mairie O lonza c
I have similar issues with remote backup and file synchronisation, as well with online submissions and payments to administration websites with which I work. These websites often have very short inactivity timeouts, with the result that I have been kicked off, or else the operation has borked mid-submission, or the payment hung and caused the whole submission process to end in a purgatory from which only a call to tech support at the administration is able to resolve, generally not within the timeframe required for the time sensitive submission.
I’d stay clear of orange. I took up their offer to CHANGE to fibre. They continued to steal money from my bank account for they old ADSL account until I noticed they were doing it. Now because I cancelled the virement for the old contract they have sent a debt collector after me. They keep asking for a copy of the letter to cancel the first account. As it was done through orange’s website and their offer to CHANGE there is no letter. Anyone that has changed to fibre I would suggest you check to see if they bothered to cancel your old account. I have now changed from orange altogether and the new provider has cancelled the orange account for me, something orange didn’t do when I just changed contracts with them.
A slightly different issue? Orange came to install fibre today. Said they couldnt as box was on neighbours wall ( its a cafe) and they’d have to give written permission as would the immediate next door neighbour. I am slightly worried this could prove difficult? Especially as i dont know owner of next door house as it is intermittently rented. Can neighbours refuse permission for fibre to come from their box? Is there a financial issue? Thanks
We had ADSL connection for Broadband in Indre et Loire and three years ago Orange offered fibre at the same price. The fibre goes past our house on telegraph poles on the opposite side of the road but our existing connection is underground to a pole 80m on our side of the road. Sadly the engineer who came to connect us couldn’t find an access chamber on our side of the road and couldn’t run the cable overhead accross the road as it isn’t high enough for tractors. After he reported the problem, Orange withdrew the offer of fibre. I have rung Orange every year since, to find out when the connection would be installed in the verge outside our property, to be told ‘soon’ every time. This week I received an automated email from Orange telling me ADSL will soon be turned off and to contact Orange to arrange to switch. The guy I spoke to on the English speaking helpline said fibre was not available and we need to switch to satellite at double the monthly cost or 4G which is slower than ADSL. Apparently we are the only property in our village without broadband even though it goes past our house. 
Hi Tim, welcome to the forum.
That … sucks.
Hi Tim
that sounds like a nightmare ! have you explored alternatives to satellite or 4G ?
Starlink offer a good service in your specific situation ?
or maybe speak to the Maire about the feasibility of installing a conduit from your property to the Fibre cabinet ? - its a long shot but might help find a solution, or the Maire may know of service ducts already installed that could be used.
best of luck.
Have you looked at Orange Flybox? We have just got one for our new house as has no fibre and seems to work well - once we got it up and running. They failed to provide the number for the sim card in the box, so took a while to winkle it out of orange.
Starlink now offer a ‘lite’ service - slightly reduced speed but still 100Mbs + @ 29 euros a month and i believe at the moment the equipment is provided for free
But that does involve handing money to Elon Musk!!!
I would investigate the 4G/5G options available with Orange, Buoygues but check which one offers the strongest network in your area. The Bouygues contract is just 30 days so no extended tie in so you could try it if the network coverage is good.
Why did you go 4G Jane? 5G is the latest technology and the 5G box also can use 4G, but obviously not vice-versa. The cost is the same I think. I’d swap it quickly if I was you, for better performance and reliability.
We’ve never had good ADSL so I’ve been using SIMs for many years now. Initially I bought two 4G TP-Link routers with a load balancer between them and used two Free 4G SIMs at €20 a month each. That gave me fast, reliable broadband but only 400GB volume, which with all the fiddling about we do was a constraint. The Orange alternative was a 4G Flybox with unlimited volume but with the reliability exposure of only one router and one SIM. So I stuck with my own config.
About two years ago Orange came out with the 5G unlimited volume Flybox option so I went for it as the cost of upgrading my own routers to 5G was astronomical, like €800. They have halved in cost since.
It’s been a mixed bag, but satisfactory overall.
The box itself was initially unreliable, I’ve swapped out three of them - always a pain as the call centre assumes you don’t know what you’re taking about so you go through a couple of levels of support and call backs before they cop on and send you a new box. And of course when the box goes down, as you only have one, you’re up the swanee and using you phones’ hotspots instead. Which of course are 5g too, so not a killer for a few days.
We’ve had no fault with our current box since February, touch wood, so maybe as I was an early adopter it was just the first batch that were faulty. They’re Nokia boxes, so that wouldn’t surprise me, and things have now settled down. But the attrition rate initially was dreadful.
The second factor is performance, which can be variable. It obviously depends on your Orange signal strength but our mast isn’t too far away so that’s fine. It depends on the weather, heavy rain dissipates the signal and finally it depends on local traffic. We find it dips around teatime generally. The box gets its knickers in twist regularly, some times not for weeks, occasionally three times in a day (yesterday 
) and needs a quick reboot.
This what I’m getting now attached directly to the 5G Livebox.
Now that that all sorted out, fibre is now available in our area and we’re having it installed on the 20th. I’m not really sure I’m wise 
You had to think about it though. 
Well, maybe if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it Sue ?
I had terrible problems with Orange and SFR back in my old copper ADSL days. Both being signed up with them individually and collectively when finger pointing was the name of the game.
I would prefer to go with Free for fibre, but as I think Orange are the fibre network installers (through subcontractors no doubt) I decided to go with them for the service too, so I’d have one throat to choke. If it all works I’ll swap to Free in a year.
I thought only one throat to choke also but not so! We lost internet recently and I rang Orange who sent someone out the next day. He traced the fault to the box in the lane but said he couldn’t fix it due to the cable being too short (?) and as another company had been into the box, possibly SFR or Free then they would have to repair it. Umpteen phone calls and eventually on the 9th day someone appeared and in 10 minutes repaired it.
We had an airbox given and a 3 hour round trip to collect it. Not best pleased so I am no longer under the illusion that Orange are the ones to be with if a problem occurs.
Well if it’s a third party I suppose one’s goosed. I wonder how Orange knew who to go after.
