Internet speed solutions.

[Perik Omo]

My internet speed with Orange is supposed to be 2mb but i rarely get more than 0.9mb - 1.1mb and it's starting to annoy me a bit as downloading stuff like o/s updates etc. take forever and often have to leave it running overnight. Anyway was investigating 3g data speeds (we are 200 metres outside the local 4g range) and using the local Bouygues mast I found that I can 5.8mb-6mb consistently. Thing is that we listen to a lot of internet radio so over a month it would eat about 13gb data for that alone. I've looked at the Bouygues site and it would seem that there is no such thing as sim-only "unlimited" data for tabltes/other devices (mobie phone calls not required) and all the packages have a limit and work out very expensive. I already have an Orange 3g dongle that came free with the phone package so did a speed test with that and it was worse than the fixed line as there is no Orange mast anywhere near us.

Is there such a thing as unlimited data sims in France? If the price was acceptable I woud dump the internet side of the Orange deal and just have the phone package.

[rdjohn]

Not much more than thinking out loud.

I think that next year the EU are going to regulate what can be charged per Mb of roaming data, so getting a cheap UK data SIM card might be advantageous. The rate will be 0.05 centimes / Mb which has got to be cheaper than French rates?

My 2Mb lines is robust but never exceeds that due to the distance from the exchange and the shabby state of the equipment - according to the FT contractor. It does stream non-stop BBC and other Amazon stuff all day as well as meet our other Internet needs

[Perik Omo]

We mainly notice how bad it is with the downloads and listening to radio between 17:30 and 20:00 where it keeps cutting out and constantly buffering. For normal internet use like browsing etc. it's OK but anything else it's dire and watching streamed films etc. is simply not possible. I'll wait and see what happens when the EU ruling kicks in and as you suggest maybe go with a UK data only SIM, I know someone in Finland whopays €19 a month for unlimited data for his tablet and that's 3G/4G too.

[Russwhitehouse]

Move to a first world country?

[Perik Omo]

Nah, quite happy really in our little corner of the "third world". Interesting day on Monday when we had a mini-tornado pass down the side of our garden, bloke up the away lost his greenhouse when it ended up as a pile of alluminium and glass scrap at the back of his garden, we lost a whole section of fencing and there are loads of trees along the tornados path that are either uprooted or snapped in half like giant matchsticks. Power was of for 9 hours on Monday and 3 hours yesterday as ERDF were having to re-cable whole sections where trees had been carried upwards and smashed through the lines along it's path. Must say ERDF were good as they were out with the trucks within an hour of the lights going out and worked all Monday, Monday night right through to 7pm last night when they said the job was finally done, the last connection they had to make was at the end of our field.

[Russwhitehouse]

Wow, sounds like you had a narrow escape! We've just been suffering biblical amounts of rain, but no tornados thankfully. Never seen the Charente so high.
Sunny today however, so may have to take the old sheds out for a blast and blow away some winter cobwebs.