As I indicated earlier, it has never been the plan for fibre to every business and home. It has always been recognised there were going to be places where it would not be feasible. There are plenty of documents on the the implementation; this is one of the most recent e.g. Le Plan France Très Haut DébitLe Plan France très haut débit | Gouvernement.fr
For the agreed major conurbations the traditional operators will deploy fibre.
For the other areas the local authorities deploy public high speed networks, some of which will be fibre. For places where fibre is not realistic there are proposals for other options including
optimising 4G generally and reception in buildings, extension of the 4G mobile network by providing an extension of the mobile network with dedicated receivers which do not require a mobile phone subscription
I have searched Elsie. And I just searched under the name of the town we come under.
There is lots of information put out by the department and town about having haut debit. When you look closer, all the areas surrounding the town have nothing. There is a pie chart with the % of homes having each speed. It looks great for 65% of the inhabitants. Or, anyone in a public building. Which of course means the town itself. There’s a suspicious “Unknown speed” (hah! ) for 20%. We are as far as the town is from the new motorway, but now cut off on the other side of the motorway.
Progressively in the past 3 years, the mobile signal from everyone except Orange has disappeared. Particularly over the 4-5 months since July. Having had contracts with 4 different mobile providers since July, as the signal progressively disappeared, I am on my last option which is Orange only, has reached 4 or 5 bars previously, now 2 bars and dropping out a lot.
The ADSL speed makes a box not even worth thinking about. But there is no national or departmental law obliging at least one decent signal to be kept available. For 15-20 years till the last 3 or so there was a decent signal available and most of the time by more than one operator.
Being 2km from a major motorway we’re not that remote we’re just in a “hole” with the signal being taken away and there’s no protection for us.
I literally cannot function personally or professionally without a decent mobile connection and dealing with the French government and public services really requires the internet now. Great for people in towns but even those of us who are not that remote and have had a signal are not being protected.
I was referring to the obligations for the future not the existing situation.
I gave some links containing more detail which will give you more information. They are worth reading.
I’ve not seen any revised timescales but Covid-19 must have had an impact so slippage is to be expected. I know FTTH here is currently about 18 months later than the 2017 timescale outlined.
Thank you for the references Elsie. I have checked them. The problem is that where it clearly makes no sense putting fibre, so there is an attempt by the government to require a decent 4G mobile signal to be provided (not even 5G), the operators seem to be able to “tick the box” of having provided 4G service by providing it in towns only. Every location should be able to get a decent 4G signal.
If they don’t want to crank up their signal strength to provide a useable reliable signal to us outside the towns then they should be told fine, you chose: you are now obliged to put fibre cable to those locations instead.
The government stuff your links kindly provided (appreciated) is not working. Otherwise why is my signal disappearing while they meet their obligations in towns?
KarenLot: I suspect the answer is just that not all of the plan has yet been implemented!
And, even when it is, the plan does not say all areas will get good 4G mobile phone coverage. Once the plan is fully implemented you should, in theory, have a fast internet connection by one of the several proposed technologies.
In the interim, perhaps you should go to the telecoms regulator web page https://www.arcep.fr and indicate a problem with your particular digital coverage?
In the UK individuals/businesses have formed Fibre Community Partnerships to get fast internet to their properties, where they are not part of the current Openreach plans, at a cost of several thousand pounds each e.g. Community Fibre Partnership - Estimated costs !!! | ISPreview UK Forum
I assume some sort of funding may be available in France for local communities to do something similar?
Is this with the same phone ? If so, it may be the phone that is the cause of the gradual dropout of services. Exactly the same happened to me, and buying a new phone recently (got it yesterday) solved my issues completely. I’m not talking about an expensive phone, but a cheap as chips from Amazon Warehouse phone. I went from Being reduced to 3g only, on occasion in some parts of the garden to 4g everywhere in a flash.
I’ve been switching SIM cards amongst 3 devices across all 4 network subscriptions I’ve had one after the other trying to beat the declining signal since July.
The direct signal is equally bad across 2 phones on every SIM. Pocophone and Samsung have different features eg Pocophone is a better phone overall, but is a pig with VPN’s and Samsung I can write with the pen directly on the screen. So I’ve been swopping the SIMs for other reasons across phones often enough to note that there’s no difference in signal strength by device.
I’ve mostly but not always used the Vodafone badged ZTE phone as a ‘control’ , or sometimes the Pocophone. The ‘control’ phone contains my UK SIM. The great advantage that as a foreign SIM I can choose which French network I want to connect to (or test the presence or relative signal strength of whichever of the French networks has a signal here at the time). Whereas a French phone will only connect to its host network.
So enough switching around has been done to know the problem is constant across devices.
The only, very outside thing that occurred to me, is all my phones were purchased in the UK market. If something technical has changed in French networks since July, so that even phones recently-ish purchased in the UK market couldn’t get every bandwidth, for instance, this might explain it. But having worked in the mobile phone industry, standards are very international and must cope with phones that roam. So I’d say it’s unlikely there’s been such a change.
Far more likely based on us having had a signal for 15-20 years, varying across how long each network stayed, always feeling “on the edge” of the coverage area(s), I think the networks all having coincidentally made a commercial decision to withdraw signal from our location, is a bit more likely. And over time have been able to track this using a UK phone/SIM on roaming.
Apologies I know I’m being boring about this as I have mentioned this on at least one previous thread. It’s just that being without a signal it’s impossible to get things done and makes any other problem that arises much harder to deal with
My OH has 2010 Nokia X6 withTalkTalk sim - this always has a signal. Very slightly newer LG phone with TalkMobile sim and newish Motorola with RegloMobile sim don’t. Switching sims doesn’t help, just the combination of Nokia and TalkTalk seems to work. Are there particular phones with better internal aerials?
I don’t find it boring at all @KarenLot , I actually find it intriguing that your mobile reception has got gradually worse. In general, phone providers try to increase coverage and reliability rather than reduce it.
Not boring at all, I know only too well the stress it can cause. To this day, I still have 2 French mobile SIM contracts with different operators (SFR/Orange) for the very reasons you relate.
Fortunately, SFR has upped its game where we now live, and we mostly get good 4G signal strength (barring bad weather), whereas Orange 4G is still “flip of a coin”, “now you see me, now you don’t”
@KarenLot As I suggested earlier, you could ARCEP. You could also contact your current French mobile operator to see whether they can help. Details from a UK SIM will be ignored! That might include them providing (at a reduced cost?) a receiver/signal amplifier with a larger antenna . However, unsurprisingly, they will probably only show any interest if you have a monthly contract.
As has mentioned SFR has the best coverage in France. There are various apps which allow you to monitor signal strength and some are linked to web pages where there is continuous logging of the reported performance.
Well, colour me surprised not, the alleged fibre deployment for which I was repeatedly informed by Orange was indeed available for our house turns out not to be possible after all, because our house isn’t referenced with the operator and installer of the infrastructure, an outfit called ATHD, whom I’d never heard of until Orange pulled their name out of a hat yesterday in an email exchange tantamount to an escape trick even Houdini would have been proud of.
So no fibre for us, despite being able to see the post on which the distributor is positioned.
Hi there, does anyone have experience of (a) issues to be aware of when their place is being connected to Fibre from a box already installed in their building and (b) whether it’s worth keeping the old cables in case the fibre isn’t upto what you thought ?
I live in an apartment block where there’s fibre installed to a common rdc point for the 4 apartments. I’m going to be the first to have it connected into my place.
We have had 9 connections made to the 2 access points that were fitted in the communal areas in advance of fiber being available, plus our own property. We have had no experience of any issues.
My internet service provider, SFR, has written, offering to install & commission their fibre internet connection as I’m now within their fibre coverage. A technician will be provided.
I’m reasonably happy with my current connection speed, though a bit slow, but wonder if a fibre connection really would give me lightning speed – which I would prefer - but would I notice any difference?
I don’t know about SFR but Orange didn’t charge me for upgrading to fibre as I was an existing customer.
I noticed an improvement immediately but that’s because my ADSL line was horribly slow (13Mb/sec at best) and I work from home so do lots of videoconferencing and am regularly transferring large files. It also means my partner and I can both use the internet at the same time without either of us having issues with buffering.
If you’re browsing websites such as Survive France or watching Netflix, YouTube, etc… then it may be less visible. However, as well as being vastly faster, I’ve also noticed it’s more reliable too. I think the connection has only gone down once or twice since it’s been installed (and one of those was because the router was faulty and needed replacing).
I guess it also depends if SFR charge more for fibre than ADSL. For Orange the monthly fees are essentially the same so it doesn’t make any sense to not upgrade.
Hi we upgraded to fibre with Orange last month speeds vary from about 200 to over 800. And it’s much more stable our old ASDL was generally about 8 but could go as low as less than 1.
When SFR offered to upgrade our ADSL, 15-18Mb, service to fibre, 500Mb, at the same existing price 24,99€, we turned them down. When asked why, we stated that their offer was not good enough. So after about half an hour of to-ing and fro-ing we settled on a deal of 2Gb, price set for two years. Less a fidelity discount of 15%. Instalation was of course free. We also received an extra SIM for the mobile service that gives 2hrs of free calls to UK mobys and a reduction on the monthly cost of the existing contract with a much increased data package.
Ask for what you want, you may be lucky.
