I have just had Bouygues phone me out of the blue (I am a mobile customer of theirs) to see if I wanted to try the 4G box for 26.99 euros per month for first year then 32.99 thereafter.
I may give it a try as we are a long way off getting fibre.
Go for it Mat. We’ve had ours for a year now (relatively) trouble free - apart from a hiccup mentioned earlier in this thread which we resolved ourselves.
Out of interest Graham, do you know if you can plug in an external aerial to the Bouygues supplied 4G router?
Yes Mat you can but you need to set the condition in the management software…
you also need one of these:
The arial leads plug in the back of the B528 box
Hi @graham & @John_Scully, I am following this discussion with interest, I think it was Graham that got me on to this Bouygues deal originally and we have been very happy with it. Because of fluctuation signal I bought the Antenne above and am really happy with it, a constant rock solid maximum signal.
Like Graham i am now considering the Free.fr package which is slightly cheaper and unlimited wheras my Bouygues is limited to 200Gb per month but I would really like to ditch my landline as it is expensive and we only ever call a couple of people. So am looking at getting a phone package and buying a 4G router especially as after January we may be here much less so could at least use the sim in our motorhome. We have the wrong kind of income for France so it is too expensive to become resident!
So I am trying to work out which 4G router to buy and am leaning towards the Solwise.co.uk offering which are not Huawei for the same reasons as above.
So any suggestions would be gratefully received. I am told that Vodafone UK have a good offering which is not data limited outside the UK because they have a European network but have not found it yet.
Steve
I’m not considering the Free offer now as I have resolved the issues around the Bouygues B528 router and it now works perfectly fine. Our deal with Bouygues is unlimited. We did experiment with the Orange offer too but that also was limited to 200/month so we abandoned that in favour of keeping the Bouygues deal.
@John_Scully speaks well of the TP-Link and the reviews are good as well…
Interesting comment… I’m sure the requirements are set out in other threads here but what specifically causes you to suggest that 
Thanks Graham, Just checked and I am not eligible for the Free.fr 4G offer but their unlimited phone deal for 10 euro pm looks interesting even after the first year for me.
As for French taxes it is the 17.5% social charges on all our income that is the killer.
Steve
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Hi @John_Scully I was getting strange things happening with my 4G router since the last firmware update, it keeps changing its IP, also the speed seems to have gone down quite a bit, so I have bought my own 4G router but when I inserted the Bouygues SIM it is locked with a PIN which I certainly don’t remember setting. When you changed to your own router did you have the same thing and did Bouygues give you the pin. My French is not fantastic especially on the phone, do you think their chat system would help. I can copy the APN settings from the Huawei if they don’t set automatically.
Thanks,
Steve
You will have received a letter with your CARTE SIM À CONSERVER from Bouygues on the back of which is the code PUK (in the form NN NN NN NN) which is the code I think you might need to unlock the sim in a new device (the same as it would be with a mobile phone SIM).
You will have detached the micro sim to insert in your router from the larger card attached to the letter (which I bet you threw away!)
front of the card with the PUK on the back
Pin on a Bouygues phone sim card is 0000 - this may or may not work for a router.
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I’d guess it should make no difference Mat whether it’s a phone or a route.
I agree Graham but I don’t know if you can enter a PUK on a router??? If not I guess you could insert it into a phone and reset the Pin.e
On the TP-Link I’ve set PIN verification to off. I don’t have the Huawei online these days.
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Thanks all for the replies, tried 0000 and it worked ok so set up and running on the new router also have set up a Mesh network using Tenda Nova AC1200 units which is fantastic so now have WiFi throughout the house and most of the garden and can just walk about with smooth transitions.
Thanks again for the help.
Steve
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I keep reading this thread in the hope that I might learn something useful. I’m sure there’s some very valuable stuff here but it feels like listening to the quantum physics answers on University Challenge. I may have to lie down in a darkened room. At some point I’ll try reading it all again, but not right now. 
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installed inside or outside John?
and which antenna?
This one Graham, as recommended by Nigel Barker.
https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B07Y1N9ZTF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I just have it stuck to the inside of the window by its “sucker”, with a bit of string as a safety device
Impressive!
Not sure it would work with the Bouygues B528 router though…
Well rabbits ears are pretty small. Certainly better than a phone’s but not much better. The twin cables from the antenna just screw into where the ears went. I don’t think the router knows what’s attached, it’ll just see a much stronger signal.
Hi all!
I want to buy 4G box by Bouygues.
does it need a sim to work? power cable only? can I take it with me around?
Please, send me information is very very important 
Roberto
I think you might have a problem with that with Bouygues as the contract seems to refer to the router being installed in one place. If they get wind of it being used on a regular basis in different places (the SIM logs to the nearest mast so they can tell) they might disable it.
You can use Bouygues chat facility to ask them the quaestion I suppose.
Others have suggested earlier in this thread buying a TP-Link router and subscribing to a data only SIM which will work in the way you describe.