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Today in France, most people in cities can have access to 100Mbps/5Mbps. Low upload speeds have been a constant around here since the first broadband offering,

by Jacqued 14y ago

Today in France, most people in cities can have access to 100Mbps/5Mbps. Low upload speeds have been a constant around here since the first broadband offering, with upload speeds capping at roughly one tenth or on twentielth of download speeds. I guess this is because the concept of Internet as an entirely decentralized network didn't make sense to France Telecom, the national operator which made the first investments. Why ? Because before Internet, France had the minitel, and entirely centralized network. And so as a pure client, you don't really need that much upload speed. Also, some argued that low upload speeds were maintained to harm illegal P2P file sharing. Nonetheless, we are seeing some symmetrical offers appear. Most notably, Orange (former France Telecom and France leading operator) is offering a 100/100Mbps connection for 45€/mo, whereas the 100/5 one costs 35€/mo.

kl0nk 14y ago
To give the entire picture, you should say that ADSL is asynchronous, and the 100/5 Mbps (and also 200Mbps/10 which I currently have, but only available in Paris) are offers offers are from "Numericable, which is a cable operator (and the only one) were/are really famous for their... err. problems (euphemism). In my last flat I was eligible to offers from "Free" ISP , and I got around 500Mbps to 800Mbps symectrical bandwith since it was only limited by the gigabit switch of the box. Sadly I had to move. And to be totally honest their peering problem (again euphemism since Youtube was slower than my smartphone with Orange in 3G) was killing the thrill. I got a faster "everyday" internet right now with 200/10/Mbps than during my "Free" days. (For the story Numericable has abandoned the peering part of the job and just buy bandwith to Level3, Neotelecoms, Telia and HE mainly. Their only job is to deploy and maintain a country wide backbone). During the 2000s France internet was really in advance, with the cheapest megabytes, but right now it tends to be like others countries :( The only good thing that remains is that traffic is always unlimited, in homes offers. The business market is still competitive. My point is I don't think €20B is really an answer, but that's not answering to how they are going to use it.

by Jacqued 14y ago

kl0nk 14y ago

To give the entire picture, you should say that ADSL is asynchronous, and the 100/5 Mbps (and also 200Mbps/10 which I currently have, but only available in Paris) are offers offers are from "Numericable, which is a cable operator (and the only one) were/are really famous for their... err. problems (euphemism). In my last flat I was eligible to offers from "Free" ISP , and I got around 500Mbps to 800Mbps symectrical bandwith since it was only limited by the gigabit switch of the box. Sadly I had to move. And to be totally honest their peering problem (again euphemism since Youtube was slower than my smartphone with Orange in 3G) was killing the thrill. I got a faster "everyday" internet right now with 200/10/Mbps than during my "Free" days. (For the story Numericable has abandoned the peering part of the job and just buy bandwith to Level3, Neotelecoms, Telia and HE mainly. Their only job is to deploy and maintain a country wide backbone). During the 2000s France internet was really in advance, with the cheapest megabytes, but right now it tends to be like others countries :( The only good thing that remains is that traffic is always unlimited, in homes offers. The business market is still competitive. My point is I don't think €20B is really an answer, but that's not answering to how they are going to use it.