Claire, when we had the French TV 'disappear' and got the Orange guy to come and check everything as mentioned earlier, he brought a replacement LiveBox with him, a newer model and free of charge for the change, but to no avail. Our lines, as in many cases in rural France, are old cabling that cannot provide decent ping speeds. As I said, he said it was France Telecom we needed to go to since they own the lines. What you say could well work, but if it does not then it is very likely to be the old lines.
Similar to us. We had the original "large" orange box of tricks which regularly got fried if we were out during lightning. Orange kept replacing them with what I'm sure were other refurbished boxes of the same model. We finally kicked off enough for Orange to give us a new model box which was like chalk & cheese to the originals. We've still got that box & it's working fine until the school kids are on holiday & nick all me internet thingys, but that's another story
Have you tried asking for a new box?
I changed ours last summer as the Wifi was getting weaker and just last week got my parents one changed to. I called orange said the Wifi was awful and the earthernet wasn't great. My brother checked the ping speed which was 3 times slower than an average according to him. First on the phone the Orange service person made us jump through all the hoops, even resetting the box. Then when we insisted the wifi was not working ( it was but so slowly it wasn't worth mentioning) they agreed to change the box; they gave us a number to show in the shop and we dropped into our nearest Orange shop, they gave us a new box we plugged it in, reset the passwords and the internet is terrific again.
It's worth a try, they don't seem to listen unless you moan that it's worse than it is.
Good morning Rebecca,
You could do worse than to check out:
http://www.ovhtelecom.fr/adsl/ ,
free to UK landlines included + 39 other countries, Kazakhstan being extremely useful of course and you can keep your existing number. Good luck.
Don't hold your breath Brian!
Ironically 'Vivre en Périgord' quarterly magazine that the department distributes turned up. There is a two page item about high speed fibre optic lines being laid to every house in the department within six years. Knowing our luck it will be five years and eleven months before ours arrives. It does mean that phones, internet, TV streaming and so on will be really viable - I am curious to see if it happens.
We are with SFR and get phone +TV + internet originally for 22.99€ per month now more like 33€. (first 6 months were cheaper I think). The speed and service is good although when we searched for an Arsenal European match on the TV we ended up accidentally subscribing to two sports channels which cost a fair bit before we knew we had subscribed and took about 3 months to unsubscribe. (They didn't even show the Arsenal match so paid about 45€ for a few seconds of watching to see if the match was on there). I think there is a way of adding mobiles to this as well but we have mobiles separately. All landline calls are in this price including all to folks back in UK. They can't believe we have free calls but it means no one rings us as they expect us to call them.
Pretty much the same story here. Better the devil you know! We once decided to give another provider a go, got cold feet & cancelled within 3 days. By then the "new" provider had told Orange to cancel our line & we had no internet or phone for about 3 weeks whilst it was sorted out! It transpired that anybody could tell Orange they had our contract & Orange were obliged to disconnect us without first seeking our concurrence. We then asked Orange to reinstate our connection only to be told it would take 10 days! My suggestion "they were not planting a seed which had to grow before anything happened & just throw the bl**dy switch" fell on stony ground & so we waited. We couldn't stand the thought of that again so stick with Orange.
With you Rebecca. We sometimes have speeds we could compare with a tortoise in slow reverse. Talk to Orange and they will give you the same soap every time. We had one of their people come because our French TV connection using our LiveBox and their satellite box packed up. The man had a look at the dish, checked the box and all and then we threw in our line speeds as a question. His response was that we need to have that out with France Telecom who own the lines. When the man who comes along with a hammer thing to bong all the telephone pylons went down our road a few months ago my OH grabbed him and asked about the lines. No plans to replace them for X years in this part of the back woods.
The package you ask about exists. Originally we had a normal land line, an internet phone and our mobiles. On the land line and one mobile we had a number of European countries where we could make free calls, so chose two where we would be most likely to call. Since we have got rid of the land line, moved the number to the internet line along with the free calls and have an allowance for so many free minutes each month on our mobiles. I can't remember how long it is on the mobiles but not that long.
We have talked to friends on every possible service supplier and decided to stay with Orange because whilst one bit was cheaper something else is not or service terrible, there is always something. So we stuck with it as awful as the service may be but the lines, well we are not going on bended knees to beg...