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Three has drastically reduced coverage in France
Phat Kev
Posts: 7 Forum Member
Since the new year Three has changed it's French network provider from Bouygues Telecom to 'Free'. Coverage in France is now only available around large towns leaving rural areas (most of the country) without coverage. When I called to complain I was told that Free will improve when it has finished building more masts. (several months) This is totally unacceptable and I would urge Three customers to complain if they have similar problems in France
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http://www.sensorly.com/map/2G-3G/FR/France/Free/gsm_20814#|coverage
I was just looking at a particular small town in rural part of France and I was about to say how bad the Free coverage looks (just along the main roads), but then I looked at the other networks and they all look equally as bad - and of course then I realised I was looking at a crowd sourced coverage map, in an area where people seemingly have better things to do than spend their time running network tests (though maybe saying such a thing on this forum comes close to cellular blasphemy!).
Meanwhile, here is Free's official coverage map (as found on their website):
http://mobile.free.fr/couverture/
(...and unsurprisingly the coverage of that same small town looks rather better!)
If Three customers can't access Orange then there may be large gaps in coverage.
If you look at 3's roaming agreements in France you can also roam onto Orange Fr, this is probably the best network in France
Don't think so - it's Free or nothing and nothing isn't much worse than Free
If you are in France at the moment, can you reboot and try to manually select Orange France?
Three have changed from Bouygues to Orange France (Dec 2014). Free has always been a 2nd roaming partner since Feel At Home started in France.
I'm convinced that Three know exactly the same about French masts as they do those in the UK as whatever the question, the answer is always the same: "errrr ummm yeah, it's coming soon, sometime, maybe, never.".
Ask them about 4G roll out and that's always the answer.
Strange as I live in Folkestone and if I go up to the top of town over-looking the channel, I can pick up an Orange 4G signal from France, but it won't let me connect with it.
Do I have to switch roaming on or something?
You don't know much about the place obviously....^_^
Agreed, a manual network selection should let you select Orange Fr.
I don't trust it. Look how the predicted coverage stops exactly at the borders
It works both ways. Perhaps the higher power cell site in France can get to you, but perhaps the small power output of your phone isn't enough to cross the channel, so the French network can't actually "hear" your phone.
Three don't have 4G roaming.
I'll bet you are a "If I speak loud enough in english, they will understand me" person!
That could be the problem then!
Today I did another network search over-looking the channel and picked up another French 4G service so now two French 4G services I can find but not one on any network in my own town.
Je Suis Pissed Off!
Yes, in the same way that just outside Plymouth there is a beach which I can pick up Orange France 3G, SFR 3G, Bouygues 3G, Sure and Vodafone Jersey but I cannot log onto any of them as my phone isn't as powerful in the other direction.
Yes, Free use Orange for a lot of 3G coverage (and all of their 2G). I think the Free coverage map includes the Orange roaming that their own customers can use.
For a location map of all French mobile phone masts this can be found here which is always up-to-date:
http://www.antennesmobiles.fr/
In the field box "Géolocalisation" you type the name of the French village e.g. 'Calais'