For many people, a key concern about moving abroad is being able to keep in touch with friends and family in the UK. With all the advances in telephony and computing this is now easier than ever – especially in France which has the highest ADSL coverage in Europe. ADSL – usually known as broadband in the UK – is now the most common way for people in France to access the internet. The main advantages of it are that it is fast, reasonably cheap and doesn’t tie up your phone line as a dial-up connection does.
All central telephone exchanges in France are now enabled for ADSL – however, this does not mean that every house will be able to access it. Generally speaking, the closer you are to your local telephone exchange, the higher your potential broadband speed will be but, if you are further than about six kilometres away, you will probably not be able to benefit from ADSL at all.
If your exchange is enabled for ReADSL (basically a slower version of ADSL) you may be able to use this. It is usually cheapest and easiest to buy a box from one of the providers, which will run your TV, telephone and ADSL under one subscription (although usually you will also have to pay for a France Télécom line). The disadvantage is that if there is a problem, you may find yourself entirely without communications. Boxes are offered by Orange, SFR and many others – visit an ADSL comparison website (see links overleaf) for the latest offers. Another option worth considering if your French isn’t too good is www.teleconnect.fr which offers ADSL with an English-speaking helpline.
Being a journalist planning a move to France and work from home, I was obviously keen to work out whether or not I would be able to use ADSL at our house in rural Ariège. Using www.ariase.com – a brilliant and informative website for all things internet-based in France – I found out the location of my nearest telephone exchange and how far it is from our house. At 8.49km by road, and assuming the telephone line would run more directly, whether or not I would be able to use ADSL seemed a bit hit or miss.
So using www.mappy.com and www.pagesjaunes.fr I found out the telephone numbers of my nearest neighbours and inputted them into the ADSL eligibility tester on www.ariase.com This told me that one was eligible for ADSL, the other wasn’t. Finally I called France Télécom and had a telephone line installed in our not-yet-quite-renovated house so I could get myself a phone number and check the eligibility of our line. In theory, I was relieved to find, we should be able to receive ADSL, albeit not at the fastest speed. But while worrying about all this, I did a lot of research into the options available if we weren’t able to get ADSL – and fortunately there are a few.
Recent Innovation
The most basic (and cheap) is a dial-up connection. The disadvantages of this are that, unless you have two phone lines you cannot be on the phone and the internet at the same time, and the connection will be very, very slow.
A recent innovation is the USB internet dongle offered by Orange and SFR – a USB stick that you plug into your computer, which allows you to access the internet anywhere. There are many tariffs available now including ones that allow you to pay as you go as well as one that charges a monthly subscription. The main advantages are that it is flexible and reasonably inexpensive, but there are download limits that would make a USB dongle unsuitable for a heavy internet user.
To use a dongle you must be in an area with good mobile reception and ideally 3G+ (new generation 3G); it is important to check this before you buy. It can also only be used for one computer at a time so it would not be possible for several users in one household to surf at the same time. A dongle can be very expensive if you use it abroad or use more than your set download limit. While coverage is fairly extensive, very broadly speaking if you are not in an area covered by ReADSL, you may not be covered by 3G+ either. However, the area covered and the download speeds possible are growing all the time.
A third option, which until recently was very expensive, is satellite broadband. There are two versions available – mono-directional and bidirectional. Mono-directional works by sending a request for an internet page to a satellite via a dialup signal and then beaming the information from the satellite in space to a satellite dish on your roof and then to your computer. For bi-directional, the signals go via satellite in both directions. The advantages are that satellite can give you a service comparable to the slower broadband speeds and can work just about anywhere however rural you are. While the monthly tariffs for satellite broadband are coming down, the initial set-up costs can be high and the signal can be affected by bad weather.
Some people get quite inventive about their broadband provision. Ches Rodriguez moved to Cadouin in Dordogne in 2003 and, working from home in IT, was looking forward to April 2006 when broadband came to the commune. But living nine kilometres from the exchange, Ches couldn’t take advantage of the new ADSL in the area.
He said: ‘I set up my own project to bring broadband to my hamlet and share the bandwidth with my neighbours and friends. While this might appear altruistic, the obvious reason was to get myself a decent broadband link and offset some of the costs at the same time. At one time I had 16 people using it and at the moment I share it with a neighbour who runs chambres d’hôtes.
‘The price of satellite broadband has come down since then, but even now while it is relatively cheap to get a reasonable download speed, you still have to pay more for a good upload speed which is what I personally need.
‘Our conseil général will subsidise satellite kit – which can cost around €500 (£418) or more – but the monthly tariff will be up to you. If you can’t get ADSL through your phone line it is worth asking your maire or your conseil général’s development officer what is available to you.’
Broadband provider
Other options are fibre-optic cable (usually just called cable in the UK) which can offer very high speeds but is only available in certain areas (usually large towns and cities) and WiMax – a kind of strong Wi-Fi ADSL – which may offer coverage in current so-called zones blanches but is so far only available in a few areas of France.
Another possibility being investigated for the future is CPL (courant porteur en ligne) which is basically technology for running an ADSL signal along electrical wires. This already works within the home but is still undergoing testing for transfer to the national grid. If you are lucky enough to live in a zone dégroupée, a broadband provider can send a service all the way from themselves to your telephone without having to use the lines controlled by a central operator, which means you can sometimes benefit from both faster download speeds and cheaper phone packages. The best way to find out if you are in a zone dégroupée is to use a website such as www.ariase.com or one of the other websites listed left.
Internet cafés are not as common in France as they are in the UK but are springing up more and more (especially in large towns) and there are also many cafés and bars all over France which offer free Wi-Fi – including most McDonald’s.
Oliver Haskell (www.donfi.com) works in IT from his home in Ariège, where he has lived for the past five years. He said: ‘We have had ADSL since 2003. Most people round here go for one of the virtually indistinguishable box offers. Most of the service providers offer them: internet, telephone, wifi, etc. Some are better than others and, as a general rule, you get what you pay for. It’s worth looking at the various websites and asking around to find out what will work best for you.
‘Satellite is a good option if you are in a socalled zone blanche although some of the cheaper bidirectional options which are advertised on the websites still appear to be in a pre-registration phase and it is unclear exactly if or when they will become available – make sure you understand exactly what you are signing up for.
‘Widespread use of CPL I think is science fiction at the moment – also it would put all the big operators out of business!’ Whether you need the internet to run a business or just to keep in touch with friends and family back home, wherever you live in France there is bound to be a solution which will suit you – it is just a question of finding it!