a BIG hunch!!! Please tell me - I'm slightly un-nerved.

Bah disons que j'ai pas trop eu besoin de faire des démarches à la Sherlock Holmes
Tu rends ton adresse mail publique... à partir de là tu sais, j'ai même ton numéro de téléphone !

et à part ça, j'ai vécu jusqu'en 2005 dans une ville à 8km de Paris, qui comporte en 2011 encore des zones blanches.
D'où ma toute première remarque, qui n'avait rien à voir avec le fait que tu vives en France (je ne savais pas)

translate.google.com

Fleurie/Heather, are you interested in having a broadband connection, in spite of France Telecom?

yes koeiekat but my only option here is satellite at great cost to set up, a slower speed and greater monthly cost than normal broadband and without the added advantage of phone calls package.

daaams; daccord, premièrement, coincidence mais comment tu peut trouver mon numéro de téléphone? En plus, peut-tu me voir peut-être par google earth??!! Je tu signale!

PS: STILL get 'compressed file invalid' message EACH time now.

Selon moi, C'est un problème de protocole de transfert. Dafont ne donne pas la grosseur du fichier à transfèrer.

hummm.... google ?

Fleurie, declic tells me that you can have ADSL at 02......81

Statistiques: Longueur de ligne: 8865 mètres | Atténuation: 80.89 Db | DSLAM: LER | Nb paires cuivre dispo: 3

Don't know what those statistics mean koeiekat but eligibility tests and chats in the locality tell me that my only means of getting ADSL is by satellite. What/who is declic?

Have a look at declic Fleurie. Type your 02......81 number in the box and see ...

ADSL
Débit max de votre liaison
avec abonnement téléphonique 29€
sans abonnement téléphonique 39€
Eligible à l'offre BI-VC NON

Thanks for that koeiekat. Never heard of declic before, nobody I know are with them or mentioned them and they have never come up on any of my searches. Do you have experience with them? The site is a bit basic. They said you could email them but there is no email address, but will try the phone number. Are you with them?

Nope, I'm not with them. Far from that. But as daaams already said, you are easy to find and thus it is also easy to see whether ADSL is available at your fixed line. You could also try to find-out whether you have mobile 3G coverage where you are.
If all fails you are stuck to satellite indeed. There are plenty of possibilities to choose from from French providers but you may also want to take a look at what Tooway has on offer. Satellite seems to be complicated but it is not. The only thing that takes some time and, true, a lot of patience is the installation of the dish. I have used sat-internet myself for two years when the whole of Spain was still on dial-up and it worked fine - in terms of those days. Yet the sat-internet possibilities have improved greatly with the now available ka-band and, in fact now offers a a basic download speed that is double the ADSL fixed-line connection that I can get in Spain. But then, Spain of course is Africa. Definitely when it comes to the telecommunications infrastructure

Love your little emoticon, gosh don't I know the feeling. Thanks for all your help, will look at Tooway as well.

koeiekat; just had to come back on to say a big thank you for telling me about Tooway, it's a much better speed than any other provider here can offer and is very competitive on price too so looks like I might finally be able to get broadband, am soooo excited! Thanks again.

La Bretagne est en France ? Question de point de vue...

France is part of Europe? Depends, Europeans think so, the French only when it is convenient ...