French FTTP Comparisons

Posted just for comparison with the UK scene !

We've got a property in a small French town (Chinon) which has only had ADSL2+ available until recently. This has been pretty reliable and giving roughly 16 Mb/s download / 1 Mb/s upload speeds and as has been normal for many years in France its a triple play installation, ie broadband, voice and TV (for extra €) all over ADSL.

Recently we've noticed some extra cabinets being installed and extra cabling appearing on trays fixed to local phone/power poles, followed by emails advertising FTTP.

A check showed that we could move to 1Gb/s downstream 0.5Gb/s upstream FTTP for less than our ADSL with TV included (monthly 22€ no contract vice 24€) so took the plunge and ordered installation from Red-SFR on a date we were going to be there.

We were given the choice of an am or pm appointment and on the day we got a phone call from the engineer to advise he was 30 mins away. On their arrival we had a quick discussion on which pole we wanted the service from (choice of 2) and where we wanted the GPON CPE and router installed. 2 hours later we've had the FTTP fibre installed from the pole to the corner of the house, routed through the loft and installed to our preferred location. Internal fibre neatly hot glued down the corner of the wall to a junction box and a small coil of fibre left from the box to the PON with strict instructions not to kink it. All kit powered up and tested.

Subsequent tests showed an average of 835 Mb/s d/l and 460 Mb/s u/l with the laptop plugged directly into the router. Download speeds are likely to be limited by our old laptop. Average latency of 9ms.

We didn't go for the additional 3€/month TV box as we get UK TV via our own VPN from the UK and Red/SFR provide French TV via a phone app which can be cast to the TV (also works in the UK).

So very happy to have a pain free triple play FTTP installation for a monthly charge of <£20 / month for speeds that make the equivalent UK speeds look pedestrian.

Nice! That's great pricing. I'm on a symmetrical gigabit FTTP connection for £40/month so there are pockets of the UK that have choice. Hopefully as the AltNets coverage continue to grow, the pressure on Openreach will be there, competition will improve on pricing for all.

Its early days for the UK still. I remember when VDSL launched all those years ago. Look at how expensive it was back then compared to now. I recall the same when ADSL launch in the early 00s. I remember paying £55/month for 512K/256K with Claranet.

In reply to a post by mrc99:

Posted just for comparison with the UK scene !

We've got a property in a small French town (Chinon) which has only had ADSL2+ available until recently. This has been pretty reliable and giving roughly 16 Mb/s download / 1 Mb/s upload speeds and as has been normal for many years in France its a triple play installation, ie broadband, voice and TV (for extra €) all over ADSL.

Recently we've noticed some extra cabinets being installed and extra cabling appearing on trays fixed to local phone/power poles, followed by emails advertising FTTP.

A check showed that we could move to 1Gb/s downstream 0.5Gb/s upstream FTTP for less than our ADSL with TV included (monthly 22€ no contract vice 24€) so took the plunge and ordered installation from Red-SFR on a date we were going to be there.

We were given the choice of an am or pm appointment and on the day we got a phone call from the engineer to advise he was 30 mins away. On their arrival we had a quick discussion on which pole we wanted the service from (choice of 2) and where we wanted the GPON CPE and router installed. 2 hours later we've had the FTTP fibre installed from the pole to the corner of the house, routed through the loft and installed to our preferred location. Internal fibre neatly hot glued down the corner of the wall to a junction box and a small coil of fibre left from the box to the PON with strict instructions not to kink it. All kit powered up and tested.

Subsequent tests showed an average of 835 Mb/s d/l and 460 Mb/s u/l with the laptop plugged directly into the router. Download speeds are likely to be limited by our old laptop. Average latency of 9ms.

We didn't go for the additional 3€/month TV box as we get UK TV via our own VPN from the UK and Red/SFR provide French TV via a phone app which can be cast to the TV (also works in the UK).

So very happy to have a pain free triple play FTTP installation for a monthly charge of <£20 / month for speeds that make the equivalent UK speeds look pedestrian.

Surprised SFR turned up and did it, my last experience with SFR was half a job was done, although the guys clearly couldn't be bothered on an FTTP install then they gave up so we got Orange and they did it.

There was a blocked duct, they didn't want to unblock it. They also said that it was our job to dig up the main road to find it and re lay it as they couldn't find the swept tea.

For all those in the UK that don't know SFR they are the french Virgin Media equivalent, often with bad customer service, very cheap and actually quite reliable (so not really comparable to Virgin).
They have purchased some altnets so have some hybrid fibre coax e.g. numericable, VDSL, FTTP, and fixed wireless infrastructure. They are also the French ISP with the highest ping according to french national studies.

I have used their ADSL, FTTP and Hybrid coax services previously, lets just say when it works a miracle has happened, when it doesn't well that's it three weeks later your still waiting.

In reply to a post by nofappingway:

Nice! That's great pricing. I'm on a symmetrical gigabit FTTP connection for £40/month so there are pockets of the UK that have choice. Hopefully as the AltNets coverage continue to grow, the pressure on Openreach will be there, competition will improve on pricing for all.

In reality it's the other way round. Right now the altnets are fighting Ofcom to *prevent* Openreach from reducing their FTTP prices, especially for the upper speed tiers. For example, the Equinox offer would drop the wholesale price of 1000/110 from £31.57+VAT to £22.00+VAT.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9020-openreach-o...
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/rivals...
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/11/rivals...

You've painted a fairly bleak picture of SFR, but half-way through you say "actually quite reliable (so not really comparable to Virgin)"

So I'm confused. Are they reliable or utterly unreliable?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

You've painted a fairly bleak picture of SFR, but half-way through you say "actually quite reliable (so not really comparable to Virgin)"

So I'm confused. Are they reliable or utterly unreliable?

Sorry I meant reliable in terms of broadband service so you always get bang on what your meant to in the case of the Cable network 500down 50UP did a week with constant speed test with a excel document with the speeds using star trinity continuous speed test.

Let me send you a live BMQ (obviously latency is high due to distance, (this is a cable connection)), like as long as you don't contact customer services to change anything, like if you upgrade they sometimes cancel you completely or forget to send you the router. One of the guys was once sent a cable modem instead of a ADSl modem and the other person who joined with coax services they "forgot" to
enable the service, i still have it in two places over there and it works well at one end of the country (Nancy using Coax) and at the other end in the (Nord) using ADSL currently due to renovations and fibre got cut i was told by phone call.

I overall would say they are reliable in terms of service but in terms of customer service i would say virgin media is considerably better.

Very interesting report, comparing France to UK.

It would be great to get a series of these, from various different countries.

We tend to get very insular, and not see outside our own tiny boundaries. What life is like in the big world. See the bigger picture.

It would make a change from the posts saying "poor me, I only get FTTC at 40 or 80", when lots of people are stuck on EO lines with slow ADSL variants.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

For all those in the UK that don't know SFR they are the french Virgin Media equivalent, often with bad customer service, very cheap and actually quite reliable (so not really comparable to Virgin).
They have purchased some altnets so have some hybrid fibre coax e.g. numericable, VDSL, FTTP, and fixed wireless infrastructure. They are also the French ISP with the highest ping according to french national studies.

Good points. For further UK comparisons Red is the cheap option for SFR (similar to BT and Plusnet). This means that I knew in advance of some of the negative sides to taking on a Red FTTP service, including:-
- only 2 months post installation telephone support, then on-line chat etc
- IPv4 is delivered via CGNAT (not really an issue as native IPv6 - fairly normal for France & our previous ADSL service from Free also had native IPv6)
- cheap kit (eg the Altice fibre CPE is capable of 2.5Gb/s download but only has 1x 1GBE port)

But all in all the basic performance is great and consistent (including latency) and well in excess of what we need. I'd place it above Virgin in that respect.

I'd actually quite like the option to use online chat for everything, rather than being told to phone up. Does depend on the quality of the people on the chat though.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I'd actually quite like the option to use online chat for everything, rather than being told to phone up. Does depend on the quality of the people on the chat though.

In this instance I prefer chat as my pidgin French isn't really up to in-depth techy discussions!

Must admit I've preferred the chat sessions I've had with Vodafone in the UK as you get the option to be sent the transcript afterwards so could be used as evidence (although to be honest Vodafone have so far been pretty good and haven't had any issues post chat!).