Ditching France Telecom...any disadvantages?

I have a sub to France Telecom for our phone line and unlimited internet with phone via Orange. I'm wondering wheter to cancel the France Telecom sub, has anyone one else done it and lived to regret it in case of line problems etc?

we have Free (the company) internet service and had a french telecom line for more than 8 years.

cancelled about 2 years ago. best decision! our internet connection is super now, (before when someone would call on the french telecom line it would cut off). We have free calls to most main countries thru Free. I have my mobile in case electricity goes out and you must call (we now call thru our modem...thus-no electricity, modem off and no calls).

best decision ! and we save 13 euros a month or so.

More info on unfair practice by Orange!

http://http://www.connexionfrance.com/Orange-unfair-quadruple-play-UFC-Que-Choisir-13347-view-article.html

well we're without our line & internet at home as our neighbour's cement lorry took out our phone line....I'm hoping FT fix it before we go back home in Feb...I don't fancy using my UK mobile to hassle FT for days on end whilst looking after a new born, 14m old & 2 and a half year old...sounds like a bundle of stress I could do without!

Yup - got those. Just in various outbuildings we have extensions that we can no longer use - and if we are to put the DECT cordless phones in there then it is another cost to consider - the plug-in extensions we already have!

France Telecom service is definitely improving - we moved on December 28th and when things did not work on New Years day, I phoned for help. The appointment was made for today and the visit was on time and successful. This compares with a four week wait in April 2009.

France Telecom really do have a 24/7 service even on public holidays and the speed with which they remedied the situation was astounding.

other players in the market rely on the France Telecom network.

I moved from France Telecom + Orange to SFR about 18 months ago. The only issue I have had (not major) was that when we lose the internet we also lose the phone. Also, can only use one phone socket now - which means the extension points can no longer be used... but the savings are great. We were not asked to change phone number. HOWEVER .. be vigilant that Orange actually do cancel the direct debit. I sent all the correct letters to cancel everything (recorded delivery) and the France telecom payment stopped, but the Orange one didn't... Unfortunately I didn't notice this for months ... literally - to the point that I had overpaid more than 350 euros. When I noticed it and contacted them it was a real battle. I had to write to them a total of 4 times, enclosing copies of letters I'd sent, their letters back to me etc. They refused to refund any of the money, then suddenly I had some unexplained deposits into my bank from Orange - which covered the overcharged amount, but no letter of apology or explanation as to why they had continued to charge me for so long. So for now I shall stay with SFR!

Hi Nick you just phone Orange/FT and say you want to cancel your FT abonnement and just keep your Orange internet and phone. It was all done within 24 hours. It's the Service Commerciale you want.

It's what was called (I think) the local loop in the UK, where BT owned the physical lines to your house, so you had to have a BT line. Same here, FT owns or owned that last bit, and you needed a FT line for your phone and internet. Here you can be on "dégroupage totale", which means that you are no longer obliged to deal with FT. You get your line from Free or whomever, or indeed Orange, but once you're on dégroupage totale you no longer need to pay the quatrerly FT line rental. The downside, as people have noted, is that if your ADSL box breaks or you have a power cut you have no telephone.

So yes, if you have your phone line via the internet box then you no longer need the FT sub.

Ours is with Orange because for my part I have always found their telephone support reasonable and easy to get hold of, and the performance seems good (moderately crappy Livebox notwithstanding). I have colleagues who have had nightmares with Free and Alice, so available support is not to be sniffed at.

I’m not too sure that I’ve followed/understood this thread, being technologically limited. Until very recently I have had the Orange Livebox internet and orange phone line (non-internet). Recently at their local office I was persuaded to change the phone line to the Orange internet because vit was cheaper. I have the option of Orange TV but don’t use it. However I still pay the France Telecom subscription which i thought i had to pay regardless. Does this mean i’m paying FR for nothing ? and can now cancel France Telecom and not have to do anything else at all.
My Orange internet and internet phone line are excellent.

Done similar for work, BUT kept the Livebox dedicated for TV. Also have another two boxes for UK TV and a 600+ world channel receiver via Astra and often watch the French channels in HD with better quality! The Orange 'free' calls are so well used we probably profit on them rather than them make a cent out of the the monthly charges. However, if you want to call somebody out Orange seem pretty good from our experience. Also, when the original Livebox overheated and fused the whole house the engineer who called changed the Livebox for the newest model without more than a wry smile and checked our fusebox just in case... Which was OK because our electrician is a genius, so said Livebox is potentially garbage anyway so rely on the other router if we can!

We have a Livebox and no FT line. The Livebox used to gradually lose its marbles, because it was dealing with TV over ADSL, WiFi, networking, DHCP and telephone. It seemed that these would randomly die because the system was overloaded, and the telephone was a frequent victim. With something like 9 devices talking Wifi as well as a couple of fixed network connections it was too much. A friend told me that the TV decoding took up a lot of the horsepower of the Livebox, and people had a bad habit of leaving the decoder box powered up.

So, eventually I bought a LinkSys WRT54GL wireless router, and I have it set up to handle the wireless and the network in the house. Since doing that the problems with the Livebox have disappeared, and we have better range for the wireless. The LinkSys also provides better capabilities for restricting access by time slot, configuration of which is painful in the Livebox.

To those commenting on Livebox. You are stuck with it and it is a pain in the rear end but then the capacity of phone lines in all but urban France is overburdened as well. When the Livebox crashes it is quite easy really, power off, then follow reboot instructions and if you do it to the letter it works. The English instructions are iffy though, confusing so if you can avoid using them it is OK. As to the good works of Free, well perhaps their onslaught will bring down prices, perhaps not but they may persuade the entire system operation to move into this century which is in FT's hands at the end of the day. Depending on where you are Free is pretty good or a disaster. I live in a disaster zone so would not bother. Their sales techniques are so stupid because the people calling cannot answer questions if they go beyond the simplest issues, so ignore them. If they get an English speaker to call instead I hope some of you have other languages to fall back on to tell them where to go. I said "Hau ab, Sie Arschloch" for those of you who do German to appreciate just how angry and sincere I was.

I've been with Free.fr for several years without paying France Telecom. As long as you also have a cell phone, you will always have a means to call Free.fr when their service dies due to modem or line problems. I don't miss FT. Their customer service stinks but I'm told all the ISP's are just as bad. They also provide free calling to Brazil which is my wife's country so she can call her mother as often as she wants. FT didn't cover Brazil. I'm not sure they do now. They advertise 20 mb of line speed but we're lucky to get 4 mb. They don't tell you about the line antenuation if you are far from the FT central switching office. However, that would be the same with FT.

We stopped France Telecom and Orange to switch to Free about 8 months ago. We had so many problems with Orange the box kept crashing etc, all the english helpline said was to reboot the box and try again in an hour, this would happen on a daily basis. We have had no such problems with Free and have in fact have had a better service, all set up is on line and problems can be dealt with online via text chat , download speed is 3 times that from Orange for the same line. It is more reliable, the only downside is that we do not have a separate phone line so that if the internet does go down, we have no phone line, but then we resort have mobiles, but that is not very often now.

Do we have to have a livebox (don't like them) to get free calls through Orange? We have internet through Orange and our own Belkin router/modem (has better Wifi range) but still have FT line and subsequent 16e a month. We are not in a degroupage area so essentially stuck with Orange...................

I ditched FT about two years ago in favour of SFR. No problems at all -- highly recommended. Free calls to UK and elsewhere and so nice not to be paying FT! Unlike Andrew I still have my old number.

We are Orange, FT went to hell some time ago. Now everything works fine. Get rid of FT at least.

Good for you. I ditched FT as soon as I could, like 6 or so years ago.

Nasty...we're with Orange too Ed and having read your post, no plans to move to Free...what an inappropriate company name!