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France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

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Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#211

Post by _mpn_ »

PaulHoule wrote: post #160
manacit wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use any one of many MVNOs to get unlimited data for around that price, say less adjusted for household income, in the USA. A favorite of mine is https://www.usmobile.com/ which is $25/mo list price (and less if you pay for the year, or if they're having a sale) which will give you Unlimited Data and 1GB a month of global roaming data If you pay $45 you can get unlimited data from Mint for $15/mo: https://www.…

In the U.S. I perceive MVNOs to be a scam. Like Tracfone was OK in 2011 but somewhere afterwards it became normal to go around rural upstate NY and no service and go around NYC and no service and go to LA and no service. This year I got a real phone with a real plan and I have coverage in many places now me I can finally see why people get excited about apps.

I have both T-Mobile via a family plan and US Mobile (AT&T MVNO) via a yearly plan.

US Mobile serves as my data eSIM, where it gives me unlimited hotspot 20GB of roaming/month. Previously I bought eSIMs when traveling since T-Mobile is only 5GB/mo hotspot/roaming and earlier at 256 Kbps.

T-Mobile is better for calls and international texts, due to it being unlimited. I also prefer keeping a non-MVNO as my call/text number so I can go to a T-Mobile store and activate a spare phone if I lose mine (which I never did), or my phone fails. With US Mobile, I'm not sure how I'd recover a lost phone.

Since the Pixel 10 Pro lacks a SIM card slot, this is important. But hey, I used my Pixel 3 on Sprint with eSIM; I went T-Mobile 3 months before they merged.

US Mobile has done well with me, although anything not-T-Mobile is really slow nowadays.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#212

Post by UncleSlacky »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #46

Currently typing this from my vacation house in France, in a rural area, with vineyards nearby. Closest highway is a 45 minutes drive (!). Now, sure, it is a fancy place in that it's Provence's seaside and, well, I can see big yachts from my couch but it's still in the middle of nowhere . At night it's wild boars (which my cat hates), snakes (which my wife hates) and toads everywhere. It's a very sparsely populated a…

> they filter traffic/block IPs/force website to imposes checks (like age checks) that aren't done elsewhere, block torrents, etc.

Is that with Orange (France Telecom)? I don't have such issues with Free.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#213

Post by _mpn_ »

alerighi wrote: post #44
nsbk wrote: post #16

Spain is at 96.79% (June 2025), up from 94.79% a year before. See [0] I think France and Spain are the best of the big European countries regarding coverage, but also adoption: If we look at the adoption ranking globally, Spain sits fourth at 90%, behind the UAE, China and South Korea and ahead of France at 83.6%. Very few European countries convert coverage into subscriptions that efficiently, and I think it's drive…

In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered. That doesn't mean automatically that one gets fiber. First at all, if someone doesn't need to download heavy stuff and has a good coverage a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros). Second a lot of people has still FTTC even if it has FTTH, mostly because FTTC offers a speed t…

Because deploying fiber is so hard in NYC, I use Calyx Institute (https://calyxinstitute.org/membership) on a MikroTik Chateau 5G R16. Calyx uses T-Mobile towers. I use the internet via L2TP to a VPS to give me a static IPv4 and IPv6 /56 block. This is only for upload speeds. I get 45-80 Mbps uploads.

I used Spectrum for four months but because of my L2TP setup, DOCSIS ACK suppression doesn't work; it's TCP inside L2TP UDP and then ACKs are then sent over the wire. This meant sluggish internet under load. Spectrum did install a high-split amp but it's still not turned on afaict.

Row townhouses in Brooklyn and Queens have Fios, but not in Manhattan. I wish I could just do a NYT ad but that'd force me to liquidate a decent chunk of my E*Trade and J.P. Morgan accounts.

I am right now visiting Belgium and I saw multiple towns, including historic neighborhoods with Proximus fiber splitters: Brussels, Antwerpe, Ghent and Bruges. The fiber and Telenet Coax is so well organized when compared to NYC's coax mess. However, where Fios is available, Verizon does an okay job with organizing fiber.

Verizon said killing line sharing would bring more fiber. Yet Proximus built fiber in historic cities more than Verizon did. I don't believe Orange France legally has to share fiber, but in return Orange can't block Free/SFR with payola deals.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#214

Post by organsnyder »

dietr1ch wrote: post #191
organsnyder wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 5Gbps symmetrical. I love having it, but the biggest use-case has been bragging about it to my colleagues. I haven't even had the full bandwidth available at my desk for a while now (I've had a terrible time terminating cat6a for reliable 10Gbe, so I'm usually on wifi), and it hasn't really bothered me much.

Even 1Gbps has been hard to justify for me TBH, most things over the internet aren't fast enough. The nice thing though, is that latency is great independent of other traffic as bandwidth is pretty much never saturated

Yes, latency is excellent. My ping time to 1.1.1.1 is 6ms on wifi.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#216

Post by sph »

Symbiote wrote: post #194
sph wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered > UK is at 85% FTTH [on a sibling comment] Meanwhile I have 1 Gb/s FTTH in an Italian village of less than 100 souls, while I couldn’t reach 300 Mbit/s on copper in London zone 4. I have been surprised at how well they have improved the situation in Italy, and in dismay at how terrible it is in UK.

Average speeds are higher in the UK than Italy. My brother in the UK has 1Gb/s fibre in a village of less than 100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...

Well I guess I must have been unlucky in 13 years in 5 flats around London with an average broadband speed of ~150 Mb/s

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#217

Post by chalupa-supreme »

testing22321 wrote: post #7
chalupa-supreme wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In metro Atlanta, just outside of city limits, I was desperate for fiber for a long time. Forced to watch other neighboring cities get Google Fiber at great monthly rates. I pay a bit more with AT&T now, but it’s so worth every penny between streaming, gaming, and personal projects.

Do you really notice it with streaming? I have 80Mbps cable, and nothing has ever slowed down. If I download something over a couple of gigs I just get a glass of water and it’s done.

I think there were big issues in my area because there are only two providers so congestion would peak in the evening from 4pm - 8pm. Netflix/Youtube would playback lower resolution and we’d be stuck with loading circles if we manually set it higher. If I remember correctly, that issue became less frequent before the switch, but I haven’t had the lower resolution issues since.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#218

Post by juliendorra »

alerighi wrote: post #44
nsbk wrote: post #16

Spain is at 96.79% (June 2025), up from 94.79% a year before. See [0] I think France and Spain are the best of the big European countries regarding coverage, but also adoption: If we look at the adoption ranking globally, Spain sits fourth at 90%, behind the UAE, China and South Korea and ahead of France at 83.6%. Very few European countries convert coverage into subscriptions that efficiently, and I think it's drive…

In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered. That doesn't mean automatically that one gets fiber. First at all, if someone doesn't need to download heavy stuff and has a good coverage a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros). Second a lot of people has still FTTC even if it has FTTH, mostly because FTTC offers a speed t…

Several of the issues you point have been solved in France via regulations (on the ISP and on the tenants of condos). It tools several years, even decades, but we ended up with fiber regulations that are good (could have been better and faster).

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#219

Post by great_tankard »

cm2012 wrote: post #162
great_tankard wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm sorry massive infrastructure projects with mandates to properly map access and measures to prevent fraud don't fit neatly into a four year presidential term before being effectively yanked away.

The cause of the delay or the blame doesn't really matter. The fact is Starlink could serve all of these users' internet now with no extra build-out cost at a 50th of the price. It's almost certainly time to rethink the plan and have the government take some of the money back.

I would think that repeatedly having to launch millions of pounds of infrastructure into low earth orbit counts as extra build-out cost. This is a literal physical constraint keeping this business from scaling like others, and I don't understand where this notion that Starlink is an acceptable alternative to fiber comes from.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#220

Post by juliendorra »

microtonal wrote: post #198
Always42 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can bring internet to these other places other than by running a 1km fiber cable, which may be more efficient. Think about it, run. A cable super long to one house or use a dish? Unless there is truly no other options in france

Unless France is going to launch the satellites themselves (which is also very expensive), you become dependent on another party, which is much worse. I don't know how it works in France, but in many European countries phone/DSL lines and fiber is highly regulated. Even if it is run by a company, they usually have to provide fair access to other providers so that there is competition. For instance, we have a XGS-PON…

Indeed, in France the first to connect a home or a building of appartements has to let the other isp access
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