Beware cancelling your broadband.
A reader’s warning…
We only spend 3-4 months a year in the PO, and so had never felt able to justify the cost of a full year’s payment for broadband (ADSL) into our home in an Albères village, so we were very pleased when we discovered a service from France Telecom (now Orange) that allowed you to cancel and then reconnect the ADSL service to match your time of residence in France.
For a year, this worked well and we were able to keep in touch with the family at home via Skype and e-mail, and enjoy everything else the web has to offer. It really made a difference to the whole “PO experience” and helped it feel like home from home.
In 2012 we tried to reinstate the service only to suffer a sad tale of ineptitude, confusion and contradiction, finally to be told that we – and indeed anyone else in our village – could no longer be connected to the “world wide” web, either because of lack of capacity at the exchange, or lack of demand – I’m still not sure which.
There seems to be no way to join a waiting list, so whether this situation will change in a week, a month or a year is anyone’s guess. This is not a hamlet half way up a mountain, but a village of more than 4,000 inhabitants with its own Marie, a mediatheque (both by the way fully online), a large supermarket and a thriving community.
Bienvenue to the 21st century.
