Your Internet connect experiences and solutions

Technology
1

As I mentioned in another group, I have just switched to a new Internet service provider called Wibox, they offer wide area wireless broadband - Wimax. This is a relatively new consumer technology and is an alternative to the cabled ADSL/SDSL or fibre connections we are familiar with in the UK. It is excellent for large wide open countries , like France, where you just can’t run cables to every house. It is widely used in other parts of the world , but struggles in more developed countries where the cables infrastructure is already in place, like the UK. The technology is very well supported however with companies like Intel pushing it heavily, to the extent that soon you will be able to buy laptops with Wimax adapters built in. Have a look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX and the company can be found here http://www.wibox.fr/ - use Google translate or Google Chrome if your not a French speaker.



We have had a patchy experience with the France Telecom ADSL connection we had before, but at the time we bought it - 2 years ago - it was better than the dial-up modem we were using. The service was fine, but due to the extended distance of our house from the exchange, we had several outages which was far from ideal. It was also horrifically expensive, as we had to install the business service and sign up for years to even get that.




The speed of the new service is impressive, but even at this early stage the customer service in terms of obtaining the equipment has not been great, but I'm putting this down to the massive uptake of the service. As always with things in France, time will tell.There may also be other providers in your area of France, but here in the Deux Sevres , we had a choice of one ;-).



What has been you experience?
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I’ve got my orange cost down to €19.90 for 8meg actually get 6 at a mile and a half from town tho I dont know if that is available to business users, see my post in ‘Any advice’.

3

Nick
I’m lucky to be no more than 2.5K outside my nearest village and a little more than that to my nearest ‘town’ (as the crow flies) and I therefore have a choice of providers :-
Orange €34.90/m, calls unlimited, service improving but patchy
Free €29.99/m, calls unlimited, diabolical service, offers fixed WAN IP address
Teleconnect €29.90/m, call packages available, adequate English service
SFR €29.90/m, calls unlimited, service reputed to be good now run by SFR but ex Neuftel ex AOL France !
Alice €19.99/m, calls unlimited, service adequate
Compare these with WiBox at €39/m and you have to have a good reason to choose it over the others.
I think it strange that sister companies Alice and Free have a €10/m difference in charges.
My area is non-dégroupée and therefore offers 2-8Mbits down, 1Mbits up.
The reliability of these services seem to have their common factor ie France Telecoms landlines which are mostly overhead in rural areas. Never-the-less I have few complaints on this point.
My biggest complaint by far is the significant pain involved in changing providers. The lowest price is not necessarily my highest priority !