This is our first posting on this site which appears to us to consist of friendly and knowledgeable folks covering a wide range of subjects.
Like a lot of you who live in rural France we are well aware of it’s limitations regarding communications. So as we have a very slow internet speed (less than 2.00mb/s) we took up the FT/Orange offer (Government assisted) of upgrading to their Flybox 3 4G to give us a better speed and it gave us a speed of 23.00mb/s - which was more than good enough. The offer we had was for a 6-month trial period.
One of the advantages of using FT/Orange is that they have a very good English speaking help line. Our French is bad at best so we find this really useful. Whenever we have contacted them (and it has been quite often over the years) we were always greeted with polite, helpful and knowledgeable people.
However, after having the Flybox for 3 weeks, we have already reached our usage limit of 200GB. There is an opportunity to top it up at 15 euros per 100 GB, but we are not willing to pay this extra amount each month. With ADSL there was no data usage limit and we were hoping that there was an opportunity to have a contract with say 400-500 GB allowance but this is not available with FT/Orange.
Another supplier of the 4G system is Bouygues Telecom that offers unlimited data usage and we were wondering if any readers have used or are currently using this company and what feedback would you give us regarding their services - e.g. do they have an English speaking helpline?
We look forward to receiving your helpful advice.
The Bouygues offering has been discussed plenty, see here:
I am quite tempted to go with it.
Hi Rachel
I’ll be interested to see what answers you get. I’m in an ADSL area with copper wiring. And such slow reported speeds (using tools advised by kind posters on here) there’s no way a landline box looks worth bothering with.
On the other hand, the mobile signal after being acceptable for nearly 20 years, has begun progressively disappearing since July. I am now on my 4th mobile network contract in 4 months since July - sadly with Orange. Which is my last hope otherwise I shall be forced to move. So far so good with them, mostly 2 bar signal but fine as it’s 4G. Occasionally more bars up to 4 even 5.
I was wondering how do you get through 200Gb in only 3 weeks? Even if I watched TV every evening and was playing internet radio in chunks of ths day, I’d struggle to use 200Gb.
A friend has recently taken on the SFR equivalent offer and is very happy with the speed - between 20 and 80 Mbps. He also has the (soon to be ceased) Orange live box and it manages 4 Mbps on a good day.
His only issue was nearly using up his 200GB in the first month - caused in his case by things like Youtube having settings that were automatic so he was getting highest quality and burning through the allowance. Now he has set his viewing to a more reasonable quality his usage has slowed down and he is sure he will not exceed the default 200GB per month - it may be something to bear in mind with your usage too.
Hi Rachel.
Welcome to the site.
We moved from Ozone system to Bouygues Telecom G4 system about 6 months ago.
We find it very good. We are in the middle of no where in La Manche.
Our usage is not high. It is used for e-mails, banking, SF, reading newspapers , zoom meeting etc, but do not stream films or music.
The backup service is very good, but, as far as I am aware, only in French. We had a problem with the box and was sorted in 2 hours. This involved in us picking up a new box from BT in Granville. Very simple and no hassle.
Hope this helps
Andy
Thank you all for your replies. Some useful information there.
We have a fairly large screen/monitor and when we stream on You Tube and the like, we usually do so in 1080 or even 2160 if its available. My husbands pet hate is a pixelled screen so it’s a must that it’s in good quality. We sometimes download things too for when the internet goes off. So that is why we need unlimited usage. We do not have a TV so rely greatly on the internet. We don’t belong to any social network channels - can’t be doing with them and don’t even have a smartphone (but that’s another story!!)
The only downside at the moment is that when we first started looking at BT they were offering the first month free but we dragged our feet a bit and have missed out on that offer. That’ll teach us!!!
Unless we have any negative replies within the next 24 hours, we’re going to go ahead and sign up with BT.
So thanks to all of you for your input.
Hello again
Well we’ve decided to go ahead and place an order with BT but on trying to open an account, we have already come up against a snag.
Even though we are French residents and have been here since 2006, we don’t have a French mobile number. We do have an English one for emergency usage, but the BT system won’t accept either our French land line number or our English mobile number.
Can anyone suggest how we get round this little problem please.
Just re-read your post, was getting confused with wondering what British Telecom had to do anything in France.
Maybe get a cheap (2 - 5 €/month) french SIM
Thank you for your reply Mark.
Of course, to most English folks BT means British Telecom, but in this case we are talking about Bouygues Telecom. I’m sorry if I’ve confused you.
Anyway, what you suggest is a good idea. Don’t mind paying about 2 €/month. But I have an English Nokia mobile with a Vodaphone SIM card. Do you think the phone will accept a French SIM card?
It should do, if the sizes are compatible and the phone isn’t “locked”
If it is unlocked.
My phone broke while I was in France last year. I now have an Italian phone courtesy of Amazon France; it works absolutely fine with my “3” SIM.
PS I could swear it gets updates ahead of the UK market 
We live near Parthenay in North Deux Sevres and wondered if SFR in Parthenay would offer these ‘cheap’ SIM cards or if not, where could we buy one from.
Thank you.
Try free.fr.
Don’t get your hopes up if anything goes wrong IME their customer service is either useless or dishonest. But not as bad as SFR customer service.
If you have a British phone with you then using it to select each network it sees, manually, will give you an idea which networks are likely to have a useable signal in your location if you get a SIM from them directly.
Is this for internet c/s. Karen? I am about to move into my new home in the town of Vire [Calvados] SFR has a remarkably cheap ADSL offer a.t.mo,
presumably because marketing of fibre will be launched in Vire after all the infrastructure work has been completed ‘no later than 31 Dec’ [ 
]
Yes I saw the offer and thought it was excellent although ADSL. I’ve been at one time or the other with all the major French networks. Only for mobile, but the customer services for box seem to be routed the same.
All I can say is that SFR had by far the worst customer service, absolutely atrocious, by phone and in shop, and that takes some doing with the level of customer service in France in the mobile industry.
You’ll be fine if it all works. If you have any problems you’ll be able to make your own judgment.
Depressing to hear. Like the Spanish, then. My gestora [fixer] told me that of all the organisations she has to deal with on behalf of clients, comms cos are the very worst - banditos! she called them. That was indeed my experience, for internet.
Some 2-3 months ago an outfit here called Videofutur sold me a fibre package, their test having ‘confirmed’ my eligibility, signed me up and then told me that they would not be providing a service until some time after Dec 31st, as fibre is not being rolled out in Vire till after that date.
They didn’t like my refusal to take up what I had signed for. I told them that any attempt to make me stick to a contract for a non-existent service would have me throw ‘misrepresentation/sold under false pretenses’ at them. They backed down.
So, it’'s a lottery then. 
Remember if you have had all your vaccines you can get 5G through your teeth 
I’ve liked the tentacles you said the vaccine also gave you, Vero. Especially the productivity gain you said you got. “you can now get 4x as much done” :-).
Biggest laugh I’ve ever had on any forum this year. 