France in Focus

Blaze, if you haven't done so recently, you should check to see what connection speed is now available to you. They put fibre into a cabinet in the village here a couple of years ago but didn't tell anyone they needed to make a request to their internet provider to be able to get a better connection (they should start putting fibre to the individual houses next year?)

I am about 750m from the cabinet. My speed went from the 2Mb/s I’d had since 2004 to 18Mb/s when I asked my original operator to upgrade. But I then checked using https://www.ariase.com/box/test-eligibilite and discovered I could get 40Mb/s so I changed to one of the other ISP options (SOSH) and now have that faster speed.

Looking at this map https://www.ariase.com/box/carte-couverture-internet, there are quite a few people in the village, even adjacent to the fibre cabinet, who are still only getting much slower speeds because they've not asked to be upgraded. If you zoom in on the map you can find the connection speeds of those near to you

Thank you Elsie, that's very helpful. We hadn't realised we had to make a request to our provider - we only found out a couple of months ago that fibre had been put in here. We've since seen green boxes on a couple of lamp posts ...
According to the map, we have 6 providers. I can't zoom in on the map to see the speeds, but testing eligibilité sounds like a good start.

I am still connected by copper wire to the cabinet in the village. For my original upgrade from 2 to 18Mb/s I retained my original 2013 modem/router and my ISP just had to do a bit of reprogramming of the line. My new SOSH modem/router has inputs both for the standard telephone wire connector and also for a fibre connection.

As I understand the fibre connection, you will probably have to pay a connection charge, and different providers can make different charges. In my case, I suspect I may also need to pay for rerouting the fibre inside the house?

I've altered the uploading of attachments to show as a thumbnail, which you can click on to make it bigger - that way those with a slower connection can see a smaller version of the photo, and those with a faster connection can click on the photo to see it in it's full glory.

This will only affect attachments uploaded from now on though - I will have to gradually go back through photo posts and reupload them to make it work for them as well - obviously that is going to be a time consuming job and may take me some time to do.

Thank you, Char, that's great.
Please don't worry about older photos if I'm the only one with a problem, (I seem to be the only one whinging about slow internet ).

I will join you about the slow internet issue if it eases your pain. I just put it down to choosing to live in rural Brittany. The region that time forgot.