Hi,just had another email from Orange stating that due to rising costs they are increasing the price of our internet and phone package again,they did this 6 months ago also,they are trying to force us in to signing up for a fibre package.Not against the idea really,but can,t find the correct info on how much it is going to cost,can anyone tell me please what the price may be for internet and phone please.I know there are cheap packages available from other suppliers but not sure about them,our neighbours have a deal for 9.99€/month but that,s not Orange.Thanks.
10€ is good, but I bet it will not last…
You have to shop around and in particular look at what is offered as they pad the price with TV and Canal+ etc and another trick is they quote a headline price but the small print says it only lasts six months…
We are getting fibre next month. I just want a basic internet and phone and free calls (this seems to be standard across the board) Best I can find with Orange is 25€ pm rising to 34€ after six months…
Here is a question - SOSH is part of Orange. With Sosh, does one get access to the Orange English speaking help desk? this line is the reason I stay with Orange. I am very slow with my French that it all ends up in a mess 
No. Sosh customer support is all by email or online chat. I have found the results from using this fast better than I used to receive from the Orange helpline (English or French) when I was with them.
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Ah, that is OK, I am happy with email. Just not talking.
I might look closer as I am out of contract with my portable and I guess paying way over the odds.
Thanks.
Another vote for Sosh fibre here. Seems rock solid and quite affordable.
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I have home internet and mobile phone with Sosh.
When a problem is detected, they send me a text message with an estimated time to fix. They also credit me with an additional 200Go of data and point to you a web site where they walk you through seeing up your phone as a mobile hot spot.
Interesting to note that when I was with Orange, I always had to notify them when there was a problem. With Sosh it’s the other way round. It seems that there is far more automatic monitoring built into the Sosh system as one of the aims behind it was to reduce cost by doing away with as much manual intervention as possible.
And another vote here for Sosh - I use them for both the mobile and net. My net went down recently again. I completed the diagnostic check on their app. It showed an issue so then it takes you to booking an engineer. Did that. Next day engineer fixed the line which was out in the public road. The second outage I’ve had, both not the fault of Sosh, and they fixed them very promptly on both occasions. When I had the same issues with orange it seemed like endless calls and checks and took ages to sort anything out. Lower cost, with better service……….work that out if you can 
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If you take people out of the process and everything works to computerised rules then I guess there are benefits all round.
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I just wish we could have fibre. The whole of this year and some of last contractors have been busy installing the infrastructure for fibre, planting large underground cables and replacing all overhead lines although the old lines are still there alongside. We are inundated with emails advertising fibre and each time we sunmit a test its the same answer, sorry only adsl avialable. Speaking to Orange gets us no where, we are told that we are signed up to thier system which will notify us when fibre is avialable and so we wait.
Must say, I have standard adsl and that is quick enough to do everything I need to - maybe I’m just lucky, but I never seem to suffer any lag time, and I use the net for watching video and have several cctv cameras running, as well as a host of other techie bits and bobs.
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Yes, some good prices on SOSH.
Who is well up on what bandwidth is used for various things? I have never really got to grips with it. Is there a formula that one can follow?
I know streaming video is expensive, but what about general surfing check a weather app or making an online/contactless payment? How much is consumed making a call even?
As radio coverage in rural France is up and down, I listen to internet radio on my portable a lot and bluetooth it into the car. Does this consume a lot of bandwidth?
Are there any idiot guide links to how to translate bandwidth into intelligible language?
Other than streaming high quality video, most of those take up very little. Even the noisy basic fibre service will be more than enough.
I have Free in the main house at 5Gbps, with Sosh in the maison secondaire at 300Mbps, and to all intents and purposes there’s not much difference except for very large downloads.
As you say, streaming videos is probably the most bandwidth-intensive activity most of us will do most of the time. Here’s an example of how much bandwidth is used to watch 1 hour of Netflix, broken down by the video resolution:
The table above is for 24 frames per second (or fps). However Netflix do also offer some videos at 60fps, in which case the bandwidth consumed increases accordingly:
To put this into perspective, I have the 2Gbit fibre connection from Orange (although it’s limited to 1Gbit per device on my home network). I can download 7Gigabytes of data from Netflix in just a few minutes*… but Netflix trickle feeds the data instead of just sending it all in one go. And most of the time I’m using a device that’s connected to my router over wifi which acts as a bottleneck too.
Making a video call uses a helluva lot less data because applications such as WhatsApp, Skype, etc… use techniques to minimise the amount of bandwidth. For example, they monitor which individual pixels don’t change colour between each frame and only transmit those that have changed. During a video call, the background is usually static unless you’re walking around, hence less pixels that changed ergo less data to transmit.
Also, video calls are often low resolutions because they’re being viewed on a phone, tablet or PC screen rather than on a 50" TV.
For WhatsApp, you’re talking only a couple of Megabytes for a minute of video (I’ve seen it mentioned that it uses 5MB but haven’t checked this myself). Bearing in mind, the lowest quality on Netflix is 792 Megabytes for an hour (or 13 Megabytes per minute) you can see that video conferencing apps are much less demanding in terms of bandwidth.
For audio, whether that’s music or voice calls, you’re only talking Kilobits not Megabits or Gigabits. There’s approximately 1,000 Kilobits in a Megabit, and approximately 1,000 Megabits in a Gigabit. So listening to audio or the radio over a fibre connection hardly even registers… the bandwidth used is so insignificant.
Hope that helps clear things up 
*theoretically, it should take 28 seconds to download a 7 Gigabyte file using my 2 Gigabit network. One Gigabyte is equal to 8 Gigabits (I know, confusing huh?) so it takes 8 seconds to download 1 Gigabyte of data on a 1 Gigabit connection, and thus 4 seconds to download 1 Gigabyte of data on my 2 Gigabit connection. In the real world things are a bit slower… but to be honest it still feels blisteringly fast for me.
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All digitally based video protocols do this. Some are better than others at compressing the data. It’s a combination of better compression algorithms, lower resolution, lower frame rates and as you say, generally less movement that gives the lower bitrate.
As @Gareth suggests, pretty much anything you do online is peanuts as far as bandwidth is concerned when you have fibre. Video is the most demanding for most people, and you could easily stream high definition video in every room of your house without it breaking sweat.
I had fibre in the capital 12 years ago, and it was wonderful, but shortly afterwards moved to the countryside, and for the past 12 years suffered a 120kb/s (fastest speed I could get) broadband, which meant I could watch YouTube at the lowest resolutions, but might sometimes have to pause.
Amazingly fibre was installed recently, and it works, so I’ve gone from a tortoise pace back to lightning speed. It only costs 2 euros more a month than what I was paying. I can’t remember the price exactly but it’s around 32 or 34 euros a month with Orange. If you’re a new customer I think they give you a better deal for the first year.
Having seen the irregularly sized and spaced poles the subcontractors installed to hold the future fibre cable, I didn’t have much confidence when they were first installed it a year ago. Now the cable is in place, many of those poles have already come down, or are at strange angles defying gravity, and many of the metal connectors they install at the top to hold the cable have fallen and hang part way down the pole. I’m already seeing bamboo and long sticks being improvised to hold up the cable where the poles have fallen or completely snapped.
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Thanks for replies,Sosh seems the cheapest but of course no access to help lines if something goes wrong,not sure how you can email them if you have no internet?Think i will just try and get a decent price with Orange.
I just installed the Sosh app on my phone and, from there, you can automatically check the health of the system and it will report faults.
There was a discussion earlier that Sosh service was actually better than Orange perhaps due to the automation.
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The offer from RED is a little better than SOSH. You bet 500mbps rather than 300mbps, which actually may not matter much. The price for RED is one month free, then €19.99 per month for 6 months then €29.99 thereafter. You also get free calls to French mobiles.
I’m looking at fibre now as our commune was opened for orders in the last few days. I’m currently with RED for ADSL and mobile, but am considering whether I should go with SOSH
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I think I mentioned before that I have Free’s 5Gbps service here and Sosh’s 300Mbps in the eventual permanent house. While large downloads are substantially quicker, there’s no real difference in day to day life.