The good news: Our new French home has an existing 10-digit landline number
The maybe not such good news: The actual phone line (with France Telecom - does this still exist ?) was discontinued/disconnected in…er…2004.
As Selectra won’t talk to me because I don’t (yet) have a French bank account, anyone like to hazard a guess as to whether this old line/number is likely to be any use/useless with whatever plan I end up signing on with ?
ps. I have actually tried dialling the old number and get an ‘unavailable’ signal, so perhaps this number hasn’t been reallocated ?
pps. Ideally, I’d like some kind of VOIP service…
Getting the phone sorted should be straightforward. Although there is a choice of phone/internet providers FrancecTelekom, part of Orange, own and manage the phone lines. There is some confusion about the lines, Orange have stated that they are going to remove the option to have a fixed line contract meaning that they will rely on VOIP. A lot of people thought that that meant the physical lines were going to disappear but they will be remaining for the Internet connection.
Any of the providers will arrange for your phone, and line if necessary, to be installed. It cost me between €50 and 60.
Thanks David…that’s reassuring…