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Three has drastically reduced coverage in France
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rasseru16
14-01-2015
Originally Posted by japaul:
“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'
sills
15-01-2015
Originally Posted by Old Endeavour:
“ so now two French 4G services I can find but not one on any network in my own town!”

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but Vodafone, O2 and EE all have 4G in Folkestone.
GeorgeMC
17-01-2015
Originally Posted by oilman:
“I'll bet you are a "If I speak loud enough in english, they will understand me" person!”

What? They don't all understand English?
jchamier
17-01-2015
Originally Posted by sills:
“Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but Vodafone, O2 and EE all have 4G in Folkestone.”

Poster must be on Three
sills
18-01-2015
I guess so, but he said he couldn't find 4G on any network
Phat Kev
26-01-2015
Originally Posted by squawkBOX:
“Are you sure?

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 love you squawkBOX!

Yes you were right, after manually searching I was able to use Orange in France and now have even better coverage than the original Bougyes telecom. Thank you so much!
Two questions (not to anyone in particular) - why didn't it just switch to Orange automatically? (it does now after the first manual change) and more importantly - why didn't the idiot in the Indian call centre tell me that there was an alternative to Free when I called to complain about their abysmal service instead of spouting drivel about new masts being built?
rasseru16
27-01-2015
Originally Posted by Phat Kev:
“I love you squawkBOX!

Yes you were right, after manually searching I was able to use Orange in France and now have even better coverage than the original Bougyes telecom. Thank you so much!
Two questions (not to anyone in particular) - why didn't it just switch to Orange automatically? (it does now after the first manual change) and more importantly - why didn't the idiot in the Indian call centre tell me that there was an alternative to Free when I called to complain about their abysmal service instead of spouting drivel about new masts being built?”

My guess would be that your phone may have not updated with the list of 'Forbidden' network partners and thus not making that connection to Orange F, strange but seems to be your case.
squawkBOX
18-01-2016
Sorry to bring such an old thread back to life, but I can see that Three have removed Orange France as a roaming partner and their site is showing Bouygues and Free as the roaming partners.



I find in the areas that I visit, Orange France is superior in so many ways. It looks like I might have to acquire an Orange France PAYG SIM. From my reading around the web, it doesn't look like this is the easiest process in the world. Anyone with any experience of the best way to go about purchasing an Orange France PAYG SIM? I am just interested in data.
JFC
18-01-2016
Hope this is not true, I was in calais for Christmas and New Year and Free was awful. Bouygues seemed OKish but not good. Can't remember if I ever connected to orange on my last trip.

RE the posts above, this is how far I got across the channel and was still able to use EE. At this point my phone was not able to communicate back to the UK mainland and the French networks kicked in. I could still see EE in Calais though.

http://postimg.org/image/fbm23tdpl/
rasseru16
18-01-2016
Originally Posted by squawkBOX:
“Sorry to bring such an old thread back to life, but I can see that Three have removed Orange France as a roaming partner and their site is showing Bouygues and Free as the roaming partners.



I find in the areas that I visit, Orange France is superior in so many ways. It looks like I might have to acquire an Orange France PAYG SIM. From my reading around the web, it doesn't look like this is the easiest process in the world. Anyone with any experience of the best way to go about purchasing an Orange France PAYG SIM? I am just interested in data.”

I indeed have an Orange France sim card and also SFR which I purchased from the shop in person, of course they will not speak in English so better brush up your French if you want one don't forget they'll need your passport and may require you to sign a document (not usually with Orange F)

On Orange you can buy a 1GB data bundle valid for 14 days for €10.00
finbaar
18-01-2016
There looks nothing wrong with that coverage map (other than it being of France of course). And if you can use Orange as well then this thread is just another example of miss placed online outrage.
rasseru16
18-01-2016
"La carte prépayée Mobicarte" = Prepaid Mobicarte

More info here: http://boutique.orange.fr/mobile/car...ayee-mobicarte

Mobile Internet Bundles with 4G: http://boutique.orange.fr/mobile/rec...internetMobile
DevonBloke
18-01-2016
Originally Posted by plymouthbloke1974:
“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.”

I was at Hallsands near Start Point today and once you get down near the sea there is great 3G/4G that comes across the bay from the water tower mast near Stoke Fleming, Dartmouth which is damn near line of sight albeit 13Km away!. Could be Tor point mast near Slapton but it's way out of sight behind a really high hill. Tor point mast is red square on here. Amazing how the coverage is coming from much further away.
http://s11.postimg.org/uilll91mr/screenshot_58.png

Anyway, my point is, you are 140Km from Cherbourg here and I can always get all the French networks on a network scan.
But yeah, the 40 odd watts of power from the mast easily travels that far. The 1 watt from my phone, well, er, doesn't!
rasseru16
18-01-2016
Originally Posted by DevonBloke:
“I was at Hallsands near Start Point today and once you get down near the sea there is great 3G/4G that comes across the bay from the water tower mast near Stoke Fleming, Dartmouth which is damn near line of sight albeit 13Km away!. Could be Tor point mast near Slapton but it's way out of sight behind a really high hill. Tor point mast is red square on here. Amazing how the coverage is coming from much further away.
http://s11.postimg.org/uilll91mr/screenshot_58.png

Anyway, my point is, you are 140Km from Cherbourg here and I can always get all the French networks on a network scan.
But yeah, the 40 odd watts of power from the mast easily travels that far. The 1 watt from my phone, well, er, doesn't!”

Go to this beautiful part of the world and VOILA! You will be immediately welcomed to France every time you visit, all French networks pick up perfectly including 3G and sucessfully logged onto them all here, not a UK signal in sight

https://goo.gl/maps/XMgYqSyvrW12
DavidGover
19-01-2016
Originally Posted by rasseru16:
“Go to this beautiful part of the world and VOILA! You will be immediately welcomed to France every time you visit, all French networks pick up perfectly including 3G and sucessfully logged onto them all here, not a UK signal in sight

https://goo.gl/maps/XMgYqSyvrW12”

That's not strictly true. I was there just the other day and out of curiosity I tried signing on to French networks with a few different sims.

Orange and Bougyes were fine, including 3G. Had a 3-4 bar signal too on Orange.
SFR I could pick up but not connect
FREE I could sometimes pick up but could not connect even once

Tests were done with 3 different devices: Blackberry Q5, iPhone 6S and Nokia C2-01. The Nokia was the most reliable, with the Q5 and iPhone being ok but not great.
rasseru16
19-01-2016
Originally Posted by DavidGover:
“That's not strictly true. I was there just the other day and out of curiosity I tried signing on to French networks with a few different sims.

Orange and Bougyes were fine, including 3G. Had a 3-4 bar signal too on Orange.
SFR I could pick up but not connect
FREE I could sometimes pick up but could not connect even once

Tests were done with 3 different devices: Blackberry Q5, iPhone 6S and Nokia C2-01. The Nokia was the most reliable, with the Q5 and iPhone being ok but not great.”

Interesting! thanks for the feedback, will be going back to do some more tests myself different atmospherics i suppose but i did manage to use them all including SFR. Any UK networks coming through down there?
Phat Kev
25-01-2016
It's quite true. After only 1 year with 'Orange', 3 have reverted back to using 'Bouygues' and 'Free' in France. Whilst the 'Bouygues' coverage is not nearly as good as Orange was it's still a darn sight better than the abysmal 'Free'
lightspeed2398
25-01-2016
Free seems quite interesting. Using 2600 as their main rollout frequency for a while. I often wonder if it would have been better for Three to do that because the penetration would match more with their 3G network then get 10MHz of 800 or something. Can anyone report how it's going Three's rollout?

Also rasseru16 that map of the French mobile antennas is great! Wish we could get one like that for Britain.
rasseru16
25-01-2016
Originally Posted by lightspeed2398:
“Free seems quite interesting. Using 2600 as their main rollout frequency for a while. I often wonder if it would have been better for Three to do that because the penetration would match more with their 3G network then get 10MHz of 800 or something. Can anyone report how it's going Three's rollout?

Also rasseru16 that map of the French mobile antennas is great! Wish we could get one like that for Britain.”

Yes that antenna map is truly awesome, sadly we don't get that treatment over here :P
binary
26-01-2016
Originally Posted by rasseru16:
“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'”

Like others have said, that's great, thanks for pointing us to that website!

It looks like mast location is publicly accessible information in France - the data on that site has come from the ANFR, aka L'Agence nationale des fréquences, a government body.
DavidGover
19-02-2016
Originally Posted by rasseru16:
“Interesting! thanks for the feedback, will be going back to do some more tests myself different atmospherics i suppose but i did manage to use them all including SFR. Any UK networks coming through down there?”

It's not easy to get a decent UK signal in the area. Most of the time Orange FR is stronger than all UK networks. I assume they must have decent coverage in France

Where exactly were you when you were able to use all networks?
rasseru16
20-02-2016
Originally Posted by DavidGover:
“It's not easy to get a decent UK signal in the area. Most of the time Orange FR is stronger than all UK networks. I assume they must have decent coverage in France

Where exactly were you when you were able to use all networks?”

I was on the bay itself when all the networks were working
squawkBOX
22-06-2016
Sorry to raise an old thread, but a quick check on Three's roaming agreements show that they've got Orange France back again! Their partnership seems to be on, then off, then on, then off...

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/Yj1I29N

I'll still be taking a Tesco Mobile SIM to France with me this summer though... Handy to know I'll get my calls / SMS on Orange France though on a backup mobile!
rasseru16
22-06-2016
Originally Posted by squawkBOX:
“Sorry to raise an old thread, but a quick check on Three's roaming agreements show that they've got Orange France back again! Their partnership seems to be on, then off, then on, then off...

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/Yj1I29N

I'll still be taking a Tesco Mobile SIM to France with me this summer though... Handy to know I'll get my calls / SMS on Orange France though on a backup mobile!”

To be fair, ive noticed the recent agreement with 3 and Orange France too... My best guess its because of the Euro 2016 Football, it will probably end after.
Richard_T
22-06-2016
Originally Posted by DavidGover:
“That's not strictly true. I was there just the other day and out of curiosity I tried signing on to French networks with a few different sims.

Orange and Bougyes were fine, including 3G. Had a 3-4 bar signal too on Orange.
SFR I could pick up but not connect
FREE I could sometimes pick up but could not connect even once

Tests were done with 3 different devices: Blackberry Q5, iPhone 6S and Nokia C2-01. The Nokia was the most reliable, with the Q5 and iPhone being ok but not great.”

I was there a few weeks ago ( where does/did the bricked up tunnel go?)
And a network scan revealed
Orange F
F -Bouyages Telecom
F SFR
Free
NL KPN
Free

as well as a few text messages saying welcome to the Netherlands, and Welcome to France
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