is broadband in france realy that good ?

ednwireland

just reading this wired article and thought it was v interesting seeing as france is held up as a paragon of good broadband
"PARIS -- France has more broadband DSL customers than most countries, including the United States. But if you happen to be one of the millions of customers having major problems with your connection, then life can be a living hell. High-tech service in France is like service in a Parisian cafe -- intermittent and snooty.

Not a day goes by when 60 Millions de Consommateurs, the French equivalent of Consumer Reports, isn't inundated with complaints from DSL subscribers about a faulty connections, abusive pricing practices or incompetent technical support. Nearly half of all complaints are DSL-related, the publication says.

"Imagine if one customer out of four complained that a bakery's bread was not fresh," the publication wrote. "
full article http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/06/french_dsl

mind you i suppose they have more broadband and faster than many places
just interesting to read about the problems as well i think

Urban Weigl

I was in rural France a few weeks ago, on a farm over 10km from the nearest town. Guess what, 20 Mb DSL worked there. Okay, the speed dropped off significantly, but the connection was still 100% reliable and faster than anything Eircom offers.

1huge1

^^ wow, thats unbelievable

smellslikeshoes

Pity we have only had a minister for fish and a poodle for a regulator. Its not too long ago since Ireland had the most advanced telecommunications infrastructure in the world. We should be on the same level as France.

JMcL

When it works, it works brilliantly. It's fast, cheap, and french people think that a cap is just something to keep the sun/rain off your head Unfortunately support can be a problem with the cheaper offerings. My mother in law (in Paris) had her modem fried during a thunderstorm last year. It took about 3 weeks for the provider (Free) to get her a replacement, that's 3 weeks with no phone never mind internet.

BarryM

I live part of the year in France, so I can speak from some experience. France Telecom's predecessor was the joke of Europe up to about 5 years ago - the old joke was that half the population had a phone and half of them were waiting for a dial tone....

Then, suddenly, the govt decided to stop fighting the EC and de-regulate properly. Up to that point there had been token de-reg, a sort of privatisation of the then PTT, the separation of the post, etc., recognise the phenomenon...??

Anyway they blew the whole thing apart by deregulating almost everything. You have now, throughout France, a whole raft of alternative operators offering all sorts of services. AND, although in rural areas there is not much LLU, the deal is that you can get off the FT treadmill through a clever, but not rocket science, arrangement by which FT gives up the monopoly on your line and routes it to your own operators nearest fully de-regulated switch, where you get all their services. Your operator pays FT for this and it is reflected in your monthly invoice. In true French fashion it is known as "ADSL nu" (nude ADSL).

The result? In my part of rural France, a village of 1,500 approx., there are, to my knowledge, 4 offers, including FT, with up to 8Meg BB, tv, phone, etc. Base prices, 29€/month for 1Meg, and phone (local and international to 35 countries included). 35€ a month gets you the same plus tv through the same box. 3€ a month extra gets you wireless routing, including the tv. Thats it, no cap, no fixed fee, no FT. The max? good ol FT, 79€ a month for 4Meg, all phone calls (including mobiles), no tv. Oh, and some operators offer no monthly fee mobiles in their packages, 10 mins free per month, marketed as a 'security' service for kids, pay after that, billed on your monthly invoice.

Oh why oh why can't we have even some of that sort of service????

Yes, some of the operators are fly by night, lots of stuff on French boards - including a continuously updated live customer service response time meter....Already some consolidation, 20+ suppliers now reduced to 10+.....

But, given the history of telecomms in France, it is GREAT, and shows what can be done.

Bye, Barry

spuddy

BB is really is very good. (support ain't however!)
I don't think most people at home have copped-on the application of fast BB speeds...

The BBC's Money Programme did a feature on BB last year, in one piece, comparing the UK with France.

And the link still works so here you go (@ ~20mins the piece on France starts)
http://media.60hud.com/Files/money-programme-broadband.wmv

Solair

Oui!

Ireland's in the dark ages in comparison.

France has had excellent telecommunications since the 1980s, in fact Telecom Eireann in its semi-state days largely modelled its digitalisation of the network on the French experience. They even largely used the same equipment and switches as France Telecom / PTT.

PTT was a complete joke, in much the same way as P&T was in Ireland. Terrible service, ridiculous waiting times to get connected etc. In the 1980s, the French cleared that all up. Ireland did likewise but took the foot off the accelerator in the 1990s.

Remember that much of France has a similar population spread to Ireland. Only really Paris and the Northeast have high density population, the rest of the country is largely like Ireland. Mixture of middle sized cities and small towns.

However, France continued to develop its telecoms infrastructure, Ireland sat on its backside and didn't move on. We had a very high tech telecommunications network by international standards in the early to mid 1990s but then failed miserably to roll out broadband and when we did, we did a poor job of it. eircom's record has been extremely poor, they've failed to do lots of basic investment and even basic network maintenence and upkeep from reports that I have heard about the state of the copper cabling infrastructure at local level.

There's really no excuse.

JZF

France Telecom launched a major scheme in the early 90s of replacing and burrying all copper wires even in the most rural parts (local farmers were getting old timber or galvanised post and wires for free ! ). The result was an immediate improvement of the lines and no more outages which were very frequent before. Jobs went to private tenders and were completed at an amazing speed with small size trenching machine. France Telecom even had in some parts a comon scheme with electricity provider EDF to get rid of wire altogether. I am coming from a small french village in the middle of nowhere ( 200 people ), no LLU yet but 10 meg is availble with unlimited phone calls for € 30 to € 40. We are building a new house at the monent 4 miles from Dunshaughlin and NOTHING, no DSL, no Wireless. 3.5 G will remain the only option hopefully.

Would a scheme like the one described above be possible in Ireland and financially viable ? Not mentionning a really nice impact on the environment.

BarryM

JZF wrote:

France Telecom launched a major scheme in the early 90s of replacing and burrying all copper wires even in the most rural parts (local farmers were getting old timber or galvanised post and wires for free ! ). The result was an immediate improvement of the lines and no more outages which were very frequent before. Jobs went to private tenders and were completed at an amazing speed with small size trenching machine. France Telecom even had in some parts a comon scheme with electricity provider EDF to get rid of wire altogether.

In the village I know well, in the Vaucluse, about 1500 population, there are still wires suspended all over the village. The EDF was tidied up a little but the telecom not yet.

I am coming from a small french village in the middle of nowhere ( 200 people ), no LLU yet but 10 meg is availble with unlimited phone calls for € 30 to € 40. We are building a new house at the monent 4 miles from Dunshaughlin and NOTHING, no DSL, no Wireless. 3.5 G will remain the only option hopefully.

Would a scheme like the one described above be possible in Ireland and financially viable ? Not mentionning a really nice impact on the environment.

Of course it would!! but I live on an island off the South coast and we have what could be described as a 'pin cushion' of poles all over the place, electricity and telephone, no shared infrastructure. In addition, there is one 40 pair cable from the mainland for telecom. The privatised Telecom Eireann would not invest in any new cable and multiplexed the existing copper pairs so that now nobody has a clear run back to the exchange, therefore no ADSL.....Of course the new owners of the network would not even consider investing:mad: .

Bye, Barry