INternet in France

[colin_jones]

In France, during early July of this year, two Internet and email systems ( both mobile phone and notebook PC to AOL) which had worked in other years and for six weeks of this year, suddenly crashed.

The technicians at Orange (Lorient) were not able to rectify, nor explain the fault and it baffled some experts elsewhere. Every time we tried to log on, we got he message ‘ The modem is unable to obtain a carrier’ or ‘ Number unobtainable.’

We got the same when we tried to load Wanadoo and Tiscali and also to get in using our UK SIM card and a UK number. No joy.

The modem was working OK for SMS ( a less demanding data sysytem)nand as soon as we returned to UK, both phones and notebooks logged onto AOL via the Vodafone network.

It looks as though the problem is with recently changed and unannounced Itineris/Orange ( France Telecom) protocols, but I am not getting any sensible answers from them. The problem has been reported to AOL, who are investigating ---- slowly.

I have met one other crew who had the same problem, but should be pleased to have contact with anybody else who met it, so that we might be able to solve it and get us all back on line for French cruising asap

 

[Gunfleet]

Colin I was there at the same time and used an orange phone in N Brittany with no problems. You do of course deselect 'auto' for the network selector? SFR and Orange will connect to data no prob. Itineris usually will. Bougyes always won't. English mobile phones just automatically select whichever system has the strongest signal. But you're the expert. You probably knew that.

 

[VMALLOWS]

Colin, I've delayed replying in the hope that someone really up on this would repond. I understand landline systems pretty well, but wouldn't claim any specialist knowledge of GSM.

Your symptoms do seem to suggest that your modem is not even connecting to the backbone telephone system. (The AOL bit in my computer often reports 'no carrier signal' when it hasn't even accessed the line).

My first line of investigation - especially in France- would be to investigate dial-out delay settings on the computer (dial-out, prefix, number). Don't know why these would have suddenly changed, but could your computer's settings have?

Don't see the relevance of SMS though, thats surely digital end-to-end.

 

[colin_jones]

Tnx for that.

We had not altered anything on a system whichhad worked the previous day.

We know the system well and all the parameters were verified.

The modem was checked with Nokia and was working fine, as it has since we came home.

We are currently talking to Fr Telecom. Wil ost the result