Rural Internet - Overview

Fibre optic cabling has, or is being installed along the sides of roads throughout the area and in most cases in now available to order a connection to your home. You can check availability by entering you address of current phone number on the Orange website as their database seems to be the most frequently updated to include new properties that can order fibre. If it’s available you can then subscribe with any provider, such as SFR or Free, Bouygues.

If you’re lucky enough to have a fibre connection , you’ll want to make the most of it with good wifi distribution throughout the property. Fibre connections start at 300mb/S in both directions and go up from there, according to the service you subscribe to. Your wifi may have been limited by the speed of your incoming internet service in the past, so you’ve not noticed that it is slow. If it’s not performing well, fibre is going to show its limitations.

If fibre is not available, you are going to be restricted to a service via the old copper lines, unless you want to go for a wireless solution.

With copper cables,he speed of service is directly affected by the distance from the equipment that provides the internet signal. There are two current variants of transmission over copper cabling - ADSL2 and VDSL2. VDSL2 is faster up to about 2km from the equipment, after which ADSL2 and VDSL2 speeds are about the same. As the graph show, you are in trouble once you’re 4-5km from the source of the signal. In most rural areas, only ADSL is available for this reason

Finally, we often refer to download speeds - the speed at which content comes into the home. Even if you have an acceptable download speed, upload speeds of less than 1Mb and often less than 0.5Mb are common and this makes sending emails with larger attachment (like photos or video clips) a problem, as well  as making video calling blocky and intermittent (for your video to the person you are speaking to).

Fortunately, for many people there are alternative options to the Livebox connected to a phone line.

Depending on you level of use, the two options are 4G or Starlink Satellite Broadband.

Do you have good 4G mobile phone coverage outdoors at your address? 2 or 3 bars on your mobile phone is a good indication. If you have a two (or more) storey house, what’s the signal like upstairs at windows (try all sides of the house, of you can) or in the loft? If you can get a decent signal, try a speed test. Ookla is a good one to try if you don’t already have a favourite. You will hopefully see 20-40Mb download speeds and 5-20Mb upload speeds. If so,  have a look at the 4G page!

If you have no 4G or are in a tourist area where congestion occurs in summer, don’t worry!

Starlink is the best solution, by far, for satellite internet with fast downloads and fast enough uploads.  As the satellites are only about 500km high, latency is low. They also have great deals in France!

There are other satellite providers, but the uplink speeds are often limited on cheaper tariffs as are monthly data limits and latency is always high. (Simply put, latency is the time it takes for each packet of data to travel up to the satellite and back down to the provider’s ground station - the satellites are typically about 36,000km high so the delay is significant).

You may occasionally find a local wireless provider - but beware, setting up a microwave wireless link is complex and you may  find the quality of service is less than you were sold!