ADSL in France – The Choices

If you speak to any PC owner in France (especially in rural areas), the topic of ADSL or Broadband connections always seems to come up in some form or another. Having had to manage for over two years without ADSL, and having to use the slowest and most unreliable dial-up connection, I can sympathise totally. If you read the reports, it would seem that most of France is covered, but you try to tell that to all the people who can’t get it!

Even worse, those that do have ADSL seem to have so much trouble it hardly seems worth having it. Coming from Ireland, I get a feeling of déjà vu I guess in my case, it’s certainly a matter of "been there, bought the T-Shirt"! Not so many years ago, Ireland had much the same problems. Broadband or ADSL unavailable in many places (again especially the rural areas), and areas that did have availability having continuous problems with quality and speed (or lack thereof). Even the apologies are the same, line not good enough, house too far from the exchange.

The real problem I think you’ll find is money, no one wants to spend any. To permit a good ADSL connection it means upgrading the telephone exchanges, fixing dodgy lines and generally bringing the telephone infrastructure up to the year 2009. For my house in Ireland I was told that the line wasn’t good enough. Then I pointed out that I was using an ISDN connection (which uses digital signal and needs a good quality line), and suddenly my house wasn’t close enough to the exchange. Then a year later, ADSL was available to me, and strangely my phone line hadn’t been changed, and my house didn’t move any closer to the exchange!

Anyhow, I digress. I think that it will be a long time before France comes up to the availability, quality and speed of Irish high speed internet and goodness knows about catching up with the UK! In the meantime, we’ll have to try to make the best of what we have, and put pressure on the Mairie to speed up whatever project is in your area. So what are your choice for "high speed internet" in France? They pretty well divide into three main types:

• Cabled ADSL through your phone line (Livebox, Alicebox, Freebox, Neufbox)
• Wi-Fi (Usually within the commune)
• Satellite

Now, let’s look these three options…

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