I tested it for you: bailing out of Free ADSL

Published on 22 November 2012

Switching Internet providers is the kind of thing that feels completely impossible to even consider for most people. Me included, actually. I looked back at my Internet history, from the very beginning, and I've only ever had 3 serious providers: Infonie in 1995, then Câble Wanadoo, then Free when I moved to Paris. That's it. (Okay, I also had a brief phase at Noos/Numericable, but I'd rather forget it.) Right up until these past few days, when I took the big leap! Alright, I'll try not to drag this out too much…

Why not stay at Free? Let's flip the question. Why be at Free ADSL in the first place? I think people who've been on the Web for a long time have a million reasons to be at Free. Free has always been associated with a leading operator in terms of innovation. Even setting aside the Freebox, the ISP's pricing strategy, and its early race, kept it for a long time at the head of the -sexy- operators. Then came the one-upmanship arms race, the Freebox Revolution came out, I jumped on it like everyone else, my bill went up, and I was finally kitted out with the Internet of the year 2020. Joy and wonder. Well, no. The arms race is nice, but that particular prize still has a nasty aftertaste… And I did have a few gripes, which I'll list below:

• The Freebox Revolution is, in my opinion, absolutely hideous.

• Paying more to get unlimited calls to mobiles, I really don't see the point, since I already have an unlimited mobile plan.

• The Freebox Revolution remote, revolutionary as it may be, makes it impossible to use the box with a universal remote (a Logitech Harmony in my case).

• In the evening, Free is slow.

• YouTube. YOUTUBE, DAMMIT. Impossible to play a video in HD, and more generally, impossible to watch a video all the way through without waiting long minutes for it to load.

While the first points are surmountable, you'd think that being with an Internet provider that massively throttles your access to the leading video provider on the Web, in late 2012, is simply no longer acceptable. Especially at that price. If you want to know more about this, click here. So it's over this last point that I decided to bail. And it's also over this last point that most of you are also dying to bail.

Okay to leave, but for where?

I started by asking myself about fiber. My whole neighborhood is wired for fiber, and after asking around for advice on Twitter, the folks at Numericable answered right away, offering me an appointment two days later, like the whole mega top-notch deal, no outage, nothing, the guys just come, activate my connection, and done. The guy came, stayed 2 minutes, and left. I live in the only building around that isn't wired. The whole street is, but not my building. I give up.

Then I look into another lead, the Bouygues and its BBox lead. I'm invited by the kind Franck to come test the BBox service, seems okay to me, I say deal. The next day I call Bouygues sales. It's November 9. It all begins.

– November 9: So I call Bouygues sales. I decide to take a BBox Pro subscription at €34.90 (excl. VAT) per month. Why that choice? Going for a pro plan doesn't change much in the end, except I assume I'll get access to a maybe-more-effective hotline (no idea, actually), but above all I'm offered a free 3G SIM card with 1 GB of data, for free. Perfect for my iPad. The downside, which I discovered later, is that I won't be able to get the BBox SENSATION that Bouygues has been promoting these past months. I really don't understand this policy of having 2 different boxes for one operator, and even less the concept of not letting "pro" customers enjoy the latest technologies. I'll be told the BBox Sensation is more of a fun toy than anything else, to which I'll reply "yeah, so what?" In practice, I don't care, this previous-generation BBox suits me just fine, I think it's smaller than the new one, and it meets my needs. The rest is secondary. Anyway, in any case I sign up (by phone), the advisor is efficient, clear, and very nice. She wants to be reassuring on one point that's very important to me: the Internet outage shouldn't exceed 24 hours, the idea, according to her, is simple: I receive the BBox before the line is switched over, once my line is switched, I plug in my BBox, and bam, I've got Internet. That's at least what I understand from her explanations. That's not how it'll go. Alas.

– November 14:

Dark day, friends, DARK DAY. My Free line is cut, just like that, BAM. I've received nothing from Bouygues, no box, and I no longer have Internet. It's a disaster. I call customer service, my box is out for delivery, fine, I'd have appreciated it being delivered sooner, but let's move on. I tell myself I'll survive this day.

– November 15: I receive the promised 3G dongle, with the SIM card. The thing can tide me over until my BBox arrives. I test it, and there I realize that this piece-of-crap data plan, free as it may be, will be useless to me. Like a lot of 3G data plans, Bouygues compresses pages and images on the fly, making all my JPEGs unusable, and I work mainly with images. Big disappointment, then. I'm also floored that in 2012, while the marketing is all about faster and faster plans, with 3G+, H+, or 4G, an operator can still get away with throttling a connection that hard, to the point of making it simply useless to a whole slice of the population. It's even more telling on a pro plan. If you work in web, images, graphic design, blogs, whatever, forget Bouygues data plans, clearly. That same day, I receive my BBox (well, I manage to extract it from my post office). I plug it in, it doesn't work.

– November 16: Glimmer of hope, my BBox is synced. But I'm not getting Internet. I take the opportunity to note that the indicator lights on the BBox aren't clear at all, and this tendency to throw dozens of LEDs at you, which in the end mean nothing, annoys me. There's actually an "ADSL" LED, which turns green not when your ADSL line is synced, but when the BBox is plugged into an outlet. Then there's an "Internet" LED, which turns green not when you have Internet, but when your ADSL line is synced. Anyway, that day, I understand that my line is synced, but that it's not getting Internet, despite all the lights being green, that's normal… And painful. So I wait, still. The next step is actually to wait for Bouygues to activate the service on the line, freshly prepped by France Telecom. Bad luck, November 16 is a Friday, the weekend is coming, I have little hope the line will be activated, and I'm right.

– November 19: Monday morning, my line is set up by Bouygues. I have Internet, it's crazy, it's incredible, it's magnificent. 6 days of outage in the end, that's too long for my taste, and I gather it can be even longer in some cases. That said, it doesn't stop me from diving onto YouTube and launching my first Full HD video, it plays immediately, no wait, no lag, nothing, I'd never seen that. That said, not everything is okay on my line, I regularly lose the phone line, and even Internet access, and above all, I don't have access to any HD channels on my TV, which is a bit worrying, given that I learn in the process that some BBox subscribers simply aren't eligible for HD, sometimes for bandwidth reasons (like with all operators), but also sometimes for reasons of commercial agreements between Bouygues and its partners, depending on where you connect. I'm quickly reassured on this point, I don't seem to be affected by it, and the HD channels are supposedly on their way to me.

– November 21: There we go, I can consider everything is good. I have Internet, I have the phone, and the HD channels have arrived.

The verdict? In terms of delays, there were 14 days between my phone call and the full activation of my line. And above all 6 days of total Internet outage. Those 6 days, that's too long. I'm well aware that there are unavoidable delays, and that it's also tied to the various parties working on my line, but there have to be methods you could imagine that would cut down these delays. It's this fear of outage times that makes most people panic at the idea of changing ISP, and I get it. That said, in the end, I'm happy. And if I go back over the problem points I mentioned above, with Free:

• The BBox (at least my model) is discreet, and rather not-ugly. I still regret having 2 boxes, but oh well.

• I'm not paying for useless services, even if I remain disappointed by the limitations of the free 3G plan.

• The remote is perfectly compatible with my Logitech Harmony, I'm happy to be back to a single, unique remote.

• So far, the speeds are decent, even in the evening.

• I can access YouTube, and that, that's just insane.

I'll add a few points:

• There's visibly no "Bridge" mode on the BBox, which is annoying, and forced me to rethink the configuration of my devices, and in particular my Time Capsule. I haven't tested everything either, I'm not sure everything works, I hope it does.

• The HD channels are stuck at numbers 301, 302, 303, etc. I find that idiotic. I liked the idea, at Free, of having all the channels at their proper numbers, with the SD versions automatically replaced by the HD versions.

• I get the impression that the image quality, both in SD and HD, is better than with my Freebox Revolution, I don't know if it's just an impression, but it's pleasant.

• I think I have channels I didn't have before, like LCI, Euronews, things tied to Bouygues/TF1 I suppose. That said, I watch too little TV for it to particularly move me.

• Throughout all my days of outage and waiting, and even after, I was never able to reach customer service by phone. When I entered my phone number, the voice simply told me my line was being activated, and that I had to wait. Impossible, then, to get any info on "what's going on," or on the delays. Thank goodness I had Franck on Twitter following it for me. Note that the service stayed unreachable for me, a few days after activation.

• Beyond the lack of communication on delays, or on "what's going on," I received no letter or email telling me anything at all, take, for example, my new phone number, I had to call myself on my cell to find it out. A little welcome letter or email wouldn't have hurt.

• I haven't run any serious, precise speed tests, but visibly the characteristics and potential of my line seem equivalent to what I had before. On the other hand, I get the impression that my "ping" is worse, I don't know if that's the word. Let's say the reaction time between each page load feels slower than before. Even if, once again, the sustained speeds are very good. It might be tied to this Time Capsule configuration business and the botched Bridge mode.

There you go, next step, cancel Free, and send back my Freebox. Bouygues committed to reimbursing my cancellation fees, if there were any. Most operators offer that, by the way, good to know if you think you're still under contract with your operator. I don't think I can give a more thorough experience report than this. To wrap up, right now, as everything works, everything is installed and configured, I'm very happy, really, and I don't regret the move. If only because it's simply mind-boggling that Free still throttles YouTube speeds, I strongly encourage you to follow my path :). Amen.

Photo credit: AI-generated illustration

By Paingout