Currently I pay Orange 29.99 and the cheapest fibre on their website is €42 which is an increase of 40%. It’s not the money, I mean an extra €3 a week is just loose change, but more the principle of the matter. I neither want nor need Fibre, so I don’t see why I should be required to pay extra.
It will soon be the only option so you won’t have much choice at the end of the day. As I said there are cheaper suppliers so you needn’t pay a massive price hike
In the meantime, have you approached your supplier to ask if there is an issue? You seen to have presumed some conspiracy to force you to take fibre which (at present) is largely irrational - when Orange want you off copper and onto fibre I’m sure they will give you formal notice. I suspect if and when that happens there will be a special tariff so you needn’t pay more.
As I said a speed of 12Mbps corresponds to the max for an ADSL2 connection - it’s possible that in deploying the fibre upgrade some work was done on the xDSL side and your line was misconfigured.
In fact I’d generally expect xDSL speeds to improve (all things being equal) once fibre is deployed because as people move off xDSL crosstalk will go down so there will be less noise. Also *some* villages might find they acquire a new xDSL noued de raccordement in the village as part of the roll out which is what happened chez nous.
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You can pay less with Sosh, but with a slower service.
Robert has already said he would be happy with 12Mbps, I’m sure the fact that Sosh are 300Mbps instead of 500 will not cause him to lose sleep.
I mean he can pay almost the same for 300Mbs that he’s paying for 12Mbs now.
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Indeed, Sosh is €15.99 for 6 months then €30.99. RED is €25.99 fixed with 2 months free, no increase on a monthly contract. I’m with RED for VDSL and will shortly upgrade to fibre with them.
Oh I know that I will be forced into it at the end of the day.
It’s the associated disruption that annoys me.
- If I lose the copper wire, then I lose my separate telephone service that currently still works even if the Livebox itself breaks down. (Something that has happened 3 times over the years.) I suppose that in future the phone will have to be connected via the Fibre equivalent of a Livebox once the change is made.
- The current phone wires come into the house in the bedroom, and then run to various phone sockets all over the house so that I can connect the current Livebox in various different locations if needs be. The current cabling system is all hidden in the walls, and I’m not really looking forward to having surface mounted cables for the Fibre. I suppose that I could rearrange furniture, or install shelving, to accommodate the new Fibre thingy in the bedroom, but it’s just more aggravation.
If I change the location of the Livebox, then there is a real likelihood that the WiFi will not be able to penetrate our thick internal stone walls to enable use of our laptop in the study. - I wonder whether I will be able to keep my current 0251 landline phone number, or will it change to some 09 number that I then have to inform everyone about.
- Will I be able to keep my current e-mail address, or will that change as well ?
All in all it’s just a pain in the neck. I don’t need 300 Mbps, the 12 to 20 range (depending on time of day / day of the week) that we currently have works just fine.
You can keep your existing phone number and email address, but if you move from orange you will eventually lose the email address
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Yes this is frustrating, in fact the biggest barrier to replacing the copper infrastructure is because of concern about access to (eg) emergency services, especially by the elderly, or alarm services and similar (eg Redcare, though BT has said that will be gone on 1st Aug 2025).
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There should be a “master socket” (the first one after the line enters the house) which is the most likely location for the new fibre bits.
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Depends how you switch over - as far as I know if you opt to switch from ligne fixe to one of the “phone via Livebox” offerings you can keep your geographic number - but you might have to ask.
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as above you should be able to keep an orange.fr email address if you remain an orange customer. That said I would encourage pople to use a 3rd party email provider precisely so that they are not tied to their ISP.
So, in some ways it might be better to tackle it on your own timetable rather than have it forced on you by Orange.
So do these new bits replace the livebox, or do they have to be connected to the livebox in some way ?
I’m guessing a bit as I don’t have fibre in France but the situation chez moi in the UK is as depicted in this diagram
For Orange/Livebox you have the “Termination point” (I don’t think it’s any more than an optical junction box that goes on the outside or inside wall) - then the functions of the ONT and router are both provided by the Livebox.
This video might give you some idea of how it connects together.
Then there are a couple of RJ45 sockets on the Livebox to which you can connect extensions.
Marvellous ! So the new Livebox ends up in my bedroom in the far corner of the house ---- once I’ve installed a power point to run it, and a shelf to put it on. Then we just hope that the WiFi signal is strong enough to punch through the 22inch thick stone walls that separate the bedroom from the rest of the house.
Oh yes, did I mention that it makes my existing hidden telephone extension cables totally redundant, and therefore throws up the question as to where in the house I may be actually able to use the phone.
As I said before, what a load of aggravation for something that I neither want nor need.
Not necessarily. Mine was installed in a different part of the house from the previous. ADSL box and exactly where I wanted it. I guess it all depends how accessible the new location is for running the cable.
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You can ask the installer to put it anywhere in the house you want.
You can ask but they might not want to comply…
If a a property has been wired aux normes then the fibre needs to arrive at the ETEL (Espace technique électrique du logement) & the Livebox is placed there. From there the ethernet ports &/or the 'phone service can be patched to whichever of the installed prises de communication you need a connection at (i.e. at the TV, or a remote wifi access point etc.).
That’s exactly the opposite of my own experience and @JohnH
You could always use the conduit that holds your extension cables to route a fibre from the bedroom to a preferred room to connect the Livebox to. You can buy them quite cheaply online with the appropriate connectors on them. You could also route ethernet cables as well as long as the conduit is big enough ?
Fingers crossed then. Unfortunately, my days of crawling around in dark awkward roof spaces installing cables are long gone, and as for an ETEL — well they hadn’t even been thought of when this house was built.
Or even electricity ? 
Circa 1875 in a little village in rural France. They probably knew about electricity but certainly didn’t install any. When the house was modernised and extended in 1964 the electrical installation consisted of single strand wires, twisted together and paper taped where they weren’t long enough, and then run through metal conduit to keep the mice at bay. All part of the patrimoine of these old buildings.