Sorry about this but I’ve got to get it off my chest.
The Problem
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We are out in the country in a holiday cottage without internet. While it has a phone line, it is provided by means of a “neuf box” which is an ADSL triple play service and they don’t allow you to dial ISP modem services. We can use cafes but they are 20 minutes away.
The Solution
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We decided to take the opportunity to try out 3G+ services which are advertised everywhere, on TV, in the papers and on the radio.
The Telco’s
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There are three big ones: France Telecom(Orange), SFR (Vodafone) & Bouyges (Waste of Time Incorporated). They All offer 3G+ services without contract on the basis of X hours over Y days. Superb!
The Technologies
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All of the above offer a USB Key which automatically does GPRS (yuck!), EDGE, UMTS, 3G,3G+ for about 70 euro and then you get a 30 euro rebate in the mail. They all offer service all over France, but at different speeds.
The Culture
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All of the retail outlets of the ISP/Telo’s have queue’s out the door, down the street and around the corner. When we went in, waited 20 minutes and popped the question about a 3G key, two of them just said “no”. Here in France, once the answer is “no” they’ve walked away and are now serving the next customers. Explanations are a waste of their time. France Telecom is Orange and the have France Telecom shops, Orange shops and Espace Orange shops. The latter two said no.
France Telecom said yes and that it would work with any PCMIA card or USB card that would take a SIM. We said yes and paid some money. They said that it was then only compatible with the USB they sell. We said yes and paid some more money. They said thank you and goodbye.
We joined the queue again and asked what happens next and they told us that we log onto Orange and start our service. We explained that we have no internet – that’s why we bought the key. They said desole and gave us a phone number.
We rang the number and keyed in the number of our new SIM eleven times and we were hung up on every time, after waiting up to 40 minutes.
We joined the queue again and waited. We told the salesman that it didn’t work and so he rang Orange ON THE SAME NUMBER and was hung up on four times before he decided that tomorrow would be better.
We joined the tomorrow queue and waited. The salesman we saw yesterday spotted us and went for a coffee. They still seek him. The next poor candidate was “the chef” and he rang up ON THE SAME NUMBER from 4 loud speaking phones simultaneously and got through to a technician. When he told them of our experience they hung up. We decided that Monday would be better.
Monday was rainy. The queue was only 35 minutes. We had umbrella’s. The chef spotted us and grabbed 4 cordless phones. He got a person who revealed that because we had tried to often, it was blocked and our free 2 hours was eliminated. Would we like to buy another 6 hour card? We said ok, we had nothing to lose except our place in the queue.
It didn’t work. We agreed that after lunch is always better. After lunch the technician answered the chef’s 9th call and SMS’d a new login and password. Guess what – it didn’t work. We got our money back and bought some beer.
The Telephone
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You can ring all of these telco’s and if you press option 456 for “English” they immediately hang up on you. We got our host, Pascal to ring up for us and they hung up on him too, once he revealed that we had a qwerty keyboard.
The People
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The people here are lovely. They are very friendly and helpful and often approach us if we speak English in the street. They often ask us if we like Barak Obama. I usually say that I’m still experimenting with Pina Colada and they go away. They will wait in queues for days until lunchtime and then they start to ask questions about when they will get served. It is different.
The Frustration
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We don’t look like getting internet at any price.
The Result
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Our emails, blogs, skypes and Mynetfone calls will be severely curtailed. We are limited to internet cafes and they are all some distance away. Some of them I would not like to be at around midnight.
Rest assured that life goes on and we are having a great time. It’s just that we can’t tell you about it quite as effectively as before. We are now doing lots of preparation at home; working up emails and blog entries, preparing photo’s and video’s, all so that we can get in and out of the internet cafe within the time limit of 2 beers.
Sante
Alan
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