ADSL in France?

Hi,
I'm moving to France in August. Anyone know if UK equipment is compatible with the French network? I currently have a BT Voyager 2110 wireless router.

Thanks
Drew

Hi Drew,

I envy you moving to France, as I'm thoroughly fed up with England. Nearly moved to France for good once before. Anyway, as I see it - and anyone more knowledgeable should otherwise correct me - about the only thing you'll need to worry about and need to get is a french set of plug-in microfilters for the telephone sockets (jacks) in the new house. That's assuming, of course, that the telephone points and wiring in the new house are already reasonably up-to-date. The DSL lead from the router to the telephone socket should be universal (RJ11), so should plug into any french microfilter that, in turn, plugs into the telephone socket. Perhaps it's worth you looking on some french websites that sell comms parts, to see what's on offer. As far as I'm aware, France and Spain use PPPoA, though the VPI/VCI numbers might be different to ours here. But that'd be simple enough to reconfigure in the router. I trust that you've already researched whether the new house is within a reasonable distance of the telephone exchange? Should be no.1 on any bloke's priority, that!

Drew,

You might find some of the information in these articles useful:-

http://www.frenchentree.com/france-satellite-tv-internet-pcs-telecoms/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=7430

http://www.frenchentree.com/france-satellite-tv-internet-pcs-telecoms/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=7495

http://www.frenchentree.com/france-satellite-tv-internet-pcs-telecoms/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=7531

I'm not sure exactly when these articles were written but I think they're 2007.

It seems that the basic setup, and the costs, of telecomms in France is very much like it is in the UK. As far as ADSL is concerned, France is a much bigger country, of course, and telephone subscribers out in rural areas are therefore likely to be distanced considerably from the nearest exchange. However, this shouldn't worry you personally, as my understanding is that you'll be moving to somewhere like Lille. Thus, if you're living 'en ville', you're much more likely to be near an exchange and should therefore get a reasonable ADSL speed. I'd still advise that you find out the location of the local exchange, in relation to the house or flat where you'll be living, in order to calculate the distance. I personally would want to keep that distance to 4km or less.

The author of the above article on ADSL reckons that the local mairie has a big say in where and when ADSL is provided, if it isn't already on tap. so if necessary the appropriate dept of the mairie should be approached. Perhaps you or your partner could contact that dept by e-mail right now, to check? This seems to fit with the way that local infrastructure and planning approval are traditionally dealt with in France.

If I find any other useful articles, I'll post them here. I've printed out some of them for myself, actually, as I too am interested in how telecomms, as seen by the consumer, works in France.

I'm currently in the process of decamping UK for SW France and am over here at the moment recently got connected.

In broad (no pun intended) terms it's much the same over here as UK with plenty of careless ISP's and [censored] c.r.a.p. customer service.

Because my French is still at the basic level I chose to go with an outfit called Teleconnect who aim their sevice at the English speaking community and must say that so far I've found then extremely good. I've phoned them a couple of times (freephone number) and got through straight away and been phoned back when promised, this is definately the exception though. I pay

Edited by KiNeL (Fri 22-Jun-07 18:08:41)