Is there an Equivalent of Ofcom here in France?

As many of you will know we have had no land line since the 15th December. They are putting up new poles and have promised that we will be reconnected by the end of July.
Orange has ‘very kindly’ agreed to reimburse us for all our line rental since the time we have had no service, but they are not mentioning any form of compensation.
Does any one know if there is an equivalent of Ofcom here in France which may be in a position to help the fifteen houses which are in the same position as ourselves?
Thank you.

Maybe the prud’hommes? Good luck dealing with Orange.

“Le Médiateur” ? Some kind of quango set up a few years ago to help consumers deal with awkward suppliers like the public utilities, telcos, etc. I have no idea how it works, or even where you’d find a local contact.

We have the Mayor of the next village, which is also affected working on our behalf and now, our new Mayor here.
I have mentioned compensation, but they have not replied on the subject as yet.
I am going to try our protection juridique as well.

https://www.mediation-telecom.org/saisir-le-mediateur

Thank you so much for that. Our neighbour mentioned it as well.
We will see what Orange come up with as we assume that we need to negotiate with them first.
We also have protection juridique.

But Jane, didn’t you mention that Orange supplied you with a dongle to maintain the service?
My guess is that they will merely refer you to the contract terms and say that they have gone beyond in trying to be helpful :thinking:
It’s not ideal, I appreciate, and I too would be spitting feathers but if you can get internet through the dongle, can you not get it by installing a 4G router (Orange do one too). Have you thought of asking them to supply one under their current 1 month free entitlement? 4G Home : Débit internet trop faible ? Orange a la solution !

We have a 3G sim card through our router. 4G does not work very well here, it has been offered to us and to our neighbours but they have had terrible problems with it.
Also our main portable is really only for emergency use, we use a VOIP 'phone for our international calls and that has not been working.
Not everyone has a smartphone!

Can you describe to me what problems were encountered?
As it’s an aerial device, placement is important and if there is a stone wall in the way, there may well be issues which can be corrected.
The fact that you get a signal on 3G with a dongle indicates to me that it is possible as the aerial inside the 4G box is infinitely more powerful and capable than that of a mobile phone of whatever capability,
You don’t need a smartphone (or any type of phone for that matter) to use a 4G router… it’s a “stand alone” device and totally independent of your mobile phones.

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When I had a problem with my phone line Orange immediately provided me with a 4G box and SIM which was brilliant. I had to find the best place in my house to put it to get the best signal but it was so much better than my usual connection. My phone does not get a great signal in the house but the Orange device worked really well. Have they provided you with anything like that?

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“equivalent of Ofcom here in France”

I suspect there’s not a French ineffective, telco industry led equivalent.

I know that we don’t need 4G for a smartphone. Some people around here cannot even get 3G. Jim got 4G for some time, but he thinks that was for a trial, as it disappeared.
We are in perpete des oies as far as telecommunications are concerned.
To add insult to injury they are installing the main fibre line from Marseilles, Lyon to Paris at the top of our lane. We will have to wait until we get it from about 12k away, as we do at the moment. That is ‘supposed’ to be 2023.

They offered it, but as we cannot 4G here it wasn’t worth much.

As I said in my post my phone gets a poor signal here but the device was brilliant. You should have tried it as it was offered.

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I am not the communications officer in this house!
Apart from Orange supplying our line, we do not have their deadbox or any other of their devices here.
From previous experience, they cause nothing but trouble.
If your livebox dies you have to go to the other side of Macon or Paray-le-Monial and queue with all the others returning the same piece of kit.

I’m sorry that you have found the equipment supplied by Orange to be unsatisfactory. In my opinion both the equipment and their service has been great. With the line fault I mentioned before everything was sorted through an App which checked the equipment in my house then the line. Once it discovered the fault I received an email explaining that the line needed to be repaired, the expected repair date and the offer of a 4G box for the period. No complaints at all. On a day to day basis my Livebox does what it is designed to do without problem.

Apparently we had a very ancient buried line which needed to be totally replaced. My friend’s daughter spoke to an engineer she saw on the road, who told her that they would have to bring the line from another village and take it along the road with new poles. This was in March and we were only told that this was the solution in June!
We were kept completely in the dark and if you asked when the line was to be repaired we were given completely fictitious dates.
We have had two live boxes go splat on us and that was enough for us.