I sympathise - it took ages after the introduction of ADSL before we could have service and even when we did it was a maximum of 3Mbps - it was only that high because I found a modem which could override some of the line parameters to get more speed otherwise it would have been half that.
And through most of this we had a high speed fibre running 50m from the house.
When we finally moved to the faster VDSL service we are still at the far limit of line length so, although the 50Mbps we now get is respectable enough we can’t have the 100Mbps g.fast service despite it being enabled on our “cabinet”.
We still don’t have the option of fibre to the premises in the UK.
In France we get 80Mbps and could have fibre up to 2Gbps but that was a stroke of luck as the village got VDSL just 3 months after we bought the house - otherwise the ADSl service we *would* have had access to would have been even worse than the old UK one.
We don’t have fibre in our village in Brittany & ADSL is dire. Our next door neighbour has about 2.5Mbps download. The previous owner had a phone line to but now it’s inactive & Orange tell me it’s impossible to connect us up again (I assume there is no capacity at the exchange). Fibre is planned at some time in the future but could be years away.
Mobile signal is absent downstairs & we get a sniff of SFR & Bouygues upstairs but not enough to actually make or receive a call or text. Free is totally absent. Thankfully there is a corner of the bedroom where Orange 4G can be found. I use a SOSH SIM in a TP-Link MR600 4G router & was getting speeds of 5-10Mbps/1Mbps but I have now added a small cheap Eightwood 4G LTE indoor Antenna (about the size of a paperback) that had improved performance to about 30-35Mps/3-4.5Mbps. I’m well please even though the router & antenna cost about £150 currently I’m using a 50GB SIM €9.99/month but am just switching to 100GB for €16.99/month. I may eventually put up an external 4G antenna to try & squeeze a bit more speed out of the 4G network.
There is no network signal downstairs but WiFi calling works on my iPhone with a SOSH (Orange’s budget brand) but my UK iPhone with a Three SIM that is roaming is a bit hit & miss. It’s a bit annoying if I’m logging in to a website that insists on sending a code to my mobile that I gave to run upstairs to the corner of the bedroom where there is phone signal then run downstairs again after I have received the text.
My current setup will suffice until fibre arrives in the village or 5G either of which is at least a couple of years away.
I came home the other day to find 2 guys taking photos of the telephone pole across the road from my house. They told me they were doing the survey for the installation of fibre to my part of the village. Problem is they are just doing the main installation, it is up to Orange as to how and when I get the actual connection. Will be interesting as the walls are 1m thick at ground level and then there is the dry wall lining. Still should be worth the hassle to get more than 2 Mb/s download.
… get rid of the “2”…