I signed up for the Bouygues 4G box and I am absolutely delighted with it. I went from 3, 4MB at a push to averaging 30 which is more than enough and I like to check the speeds every now and then and see it go up to 85MB…super happy customer here. They’ve offered me a free antenna, but I don’t think I even need it. What do you think?
Didnt offer me one…
@Mat_Davies I thought that there was an EU law now that they are not allowed to differentiate between a Phone & a Router
When we moved at the beginning of October to the rural location (85) we’re renting in at the moment the land line hadn’t been used for several years and the predicted speed was very poor so we went for Bouygue’s 4G box.
The speed was impressive (up to 180 down and 60 up) but shortly after we started using it and for a couple of months intermittently it became very unreliable, mainly at peak times.
BUT I have to say that since Christmas it has been purring! It’s brilliant and there are no performance issues at any time of the day now.
I use the sim in my Huawei B535 4G router and connect the Bouygues box (also Huawei) to that to operate as a sim-less VPN router for the TV.
We’ve been dealing with Bouygues via the local boutique in Fontenay-le-Comte and one of the staff there is incredibly helpful and speaks very good English.
We’re moving to our permanent home an hour from where we are now (border of 79 and 86) and we’ve checked at the shop and they say we can bring our 4G Box with us and while the speed will be a bit slower it will still be more than adequate, which is a big relief as we work from home and use online video as well as streaming TV a lot and the landline at the house is also very slow.
So thumbs up from us for the Bouygues 4G box!
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That’s great have ordered mine should be arriving any day now. Will put tit to the test.
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Hope we have the same experience. We are in 33 and 5 minutes from our permanent home. The lady at Selecta recommended the Bouygue’s 4G box as i work from home and the internet here in the gite is really unreliable recently. So have ordered it so we can move with the box to our new home where it says Bouygue’s 4G box may not work but will see.
We bought our 4G Box when we were renting in the Vendée (85) and after an unreliable start it worked brilliantly because we were very close to the telecom tower.
At the end of February we moved to the house we’ve bought in the Vienne (86). The tower is 4.5km away and the house has two foot thick stone walls.
The 4G box needed to be re-registered at our new address before it would work with the new tower. Even then it had to be positioned very carefully in the house to get any signal at all.
We just went to the Bouygues shop where we originally bought it and they took care of everything and even replaced our box with a newer model.
But we didn’t get adequate performance without an additional antenna because of our house walls so we needed an external one on the roof.
I ordered a cross-polarised twin Yagi antenna from Amazon and installed it myself to a roof timber (much to my wife’s concern while I was up the ladder!).
We can now get 40 megabits down and 18 up but it’s quite variable. In the evenings it does drop low enough for some video buffering.
The local tower has a poor contention ratio. I can only hope that, like at our original place, it gets an unexpected improvement at some point!
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Log periodic.
@anon88169868 - Ah yes, sorry - it’s a larger antenna and supports a wider range of frequencies than a Yagi.
Hi Ian do you have a link for the aerial and the pole?
Hi, I got the antennas from Amazon France:
The pole and 90 degree fixing were just standard ones used for TV and satellite aerials and dishes from Castorama.
The antennas come with 10m of cable hard-wired. You will need an adapter for the latest 4G Box but I’m using my own Huawei B535 4G router which doesn’t need adapters.
I’m still using the 4G Box supplied by Bouygues but simply as a secondary wifi router in my network (running a VPN for watching Internet TV).
Hi all,
So I am trying to order sim from Bouygues website. All seems to go through ok when ordering but it has been stuck in verification for 2 days now. Any Ideas? Went to the shop and they said they can not help. My French is non existent atm and they were not speaking english.
Or if anyone know the easiest way to get hold of SIM with some data on it for the time being. I have French address but no French number yet as I find it difficult to get that online
I see you have made a card payment but is the card with a FR IBAN or GB one? We have 3 accounts with Bouygues - 2 mobiles and a 4G router - and all of these are paid from our French bank account (so with an FR IBAN) ?
Unusual to see the ordering information in English though - normally, the site is only in French and logging in to our account it is still only in French.
I can only think the system is showing in progress because it is trying to verify your account details as the next step and if your payment is with a non FR IBAN account, it is having trouble verifying it for the prélèvement automatique (monthly standing order).
That’s the only explanation I can give at this stage with the information provided.
Hi Graham,
That is what I was worried will happen. It is a Revolut IBAN but starting with GB.
Page is in English thanks to google translating it for me. Original is in french only.
I guess their system is not ok with GB iban but it should really reject it at the first stage.
ahhh that explains it then.
As a separate issue, curious though about the GB IBAN - has your Revolut account not been moved to Lithuania (so LT IBAN)? If not, presumably Revolut think you are still resident in the UK (are you?)
Sadly, despite EU legislation to the contrary, France seems not to respect the rules on IBAN discrimination.
Have you checked your Revolut account to see if the transaction has gone through? You may need to contact Revolut through support in the app to get the transaction nullified and then set up a French bank account (which you will probably need to have anyway to pay French utilities, tax etc) and start the order process over.
We have in the past managed to speak to a Bouygues sales person in English but it’s not encouraged. They found a English speaker who agreed to telephone our friend back to answer their questions but we had to request that first in French with them.
Just as an aside, I think the question about IBAN discrimination in France comes about simply because, in France, Banque de France have to authorise each and every French bank account and there are very tight rules to be observed. Accounts outside of France are not bound by those controls hence the issue. In France the consumer cannot cancel a prélèvement automatique - only the beneficiary but of course in the UK, the consumer (bank customer) can cancel a DD so the reluctance to accept other than FR IBAN is understandable. It also applies specifically to insurance policies too - I’m surprised you haven’t encountered it until now. @fabien (the SF insurance guru) confirmed only recently that non FR IBANs are not accepted for car insurance policies and I’m sure also occurs with mandatory public liability and house insurance policies too.
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Hey Graham,
Thank you for your messages. Oddly as we exchanged messages our application has moved forward a bit
As for the other questions. We have just moved to France (2 days ago) so in process of sorting out bank account etc but it is not so easy without internet 
fingers crossed then Marcin. Welcome to France! Where will you be based? If you click on the hamburger (3 line) icon to the left of your avatar in the SF banner you will see the User Map listing members near to you.
You have a lot of things on your plate then… Hopefully there are resources on SF which will guide you through the many processes you will encounter on your journey; health and social security cover, tax, property,car and health insurance; the list goes on.
Please feel free to ask away if anything troubles you - most (if not all) members here have been through the mill and can share personal experiences which will benefit you.
I am useless at this kind of thing so not sure I am posting on the correct thread here, so please excuse me if I am not. My sister has subscribed to the Bouygues 30 day 4G Bbox offer. She can get a good signal on her phone and her laptop. But the TV, after having worked initially, no longer seems to have the signal, and the plug in phone does not work at all. I have tested the phone in my own 4g router and it works perfectly. I have brought the Bbox over to my house to test it here but it won’t work, won’t accept the password. We haven’t been on to Bouygues yet (I have memories of their customer service being less than useless). But we will have to try this unless anyone can suggest what the problem might be. Very many thanks for any replies.