France and the Internet
Except at large, very modern hotels (exceptions will be duly noted in our travelogues), do not expect to be able to connect to the Internet at most ma and pa Bed & Breakfast or small hotels. At least, not from your room. In many smaller places, the phones are wired in the wall, so you can’t even unhook the phone to plug in your computer!
As I write this, I have 7 weeks of frustration behind me. We had no problems connecting on our arrival in Paris. The Ibis Hotel where we stayed had opened two weeks earlier, and our room’s phone even had a regular modem plug in it. I didn’t have to use the adapter that Dell had sent me! All I had to do was program the AOL French numbers to add a “0″ to get out of the hotel, and we were surfing in no time at all.
On our first night in Normandie, we tried to connect, but no such luck. We tried to use our adapter at the Ibis Hotel in Falaise, but impossible to get a tone. I was told by the reception that my computer was probably too new… If I really needed to connect, they would be glad to let me bring my portable to the reception where they could hook me up on a direct line.
Time and time again, we found that we had to go to the reception and do just that. Problem was, we couldn’t stay on very long since we were monopolizing one of the very few hotel phone lines!
It is not until we got to La Baule and rented a studio for three days with our own phone line – where anyone could call us directly any time of the day or night, but from which we could not connect to the Net – that the manager there explained to me that it was because most systems in France were “numerical” whereas access to the Net necessitates an “analog” phone system. Most phone systems in B&B are just too antiquated to handle the Net. You technical buffs out there will probably understand what that all means.
Once we stopped at a Campanile hotel, solely because their brochure indicated that the rooms provided access to Minitel and Internet. Sure enough, right next to the phone line was a separate plug where I could use my adapter. But, couldn’t connect!! So back to the reception with the portable where they let me bypass the hotel phone system.
Indeed you could connect with a Minitel from your room (the hotel lent you a machine), but Minitel is apparently based on a much older system. For those of you who don’t know what Minitel is, it is a service offered by the French telephone company some 15 years ago, a precursor of the Internet, really. A small screen and a keyboard can be hooked to the phone line, providing instant access to all phone books, allowing to reserve/book tickets of all kinds, ordering from catalogs etc… I have been told by many computer buffs in France that this Minitel is probably the major reason why France is behind in the world of the Internet. It took a while for most French people to master that technology, and once they became comfortable with it, they didn’t want to let go!
However, in just the seven weeks we were there, we saw changes take place. I read that the French government is investing tons of money this fall to wire schools. More and more people buy home computers and hook up to the Net… Owners of small hotels and B&B’s I spoke to told me that they know that they will have to upgrade their phone systems as more and more patrons request the service.
I had read in some travel guides that there are cybercafés popping up everywhere. Well, we didn’t see any, except one in Nice, not far from La Promenade des Anglais, but we were hosted by friends in Nice so we could use their phone. But that is it! As much walking as we did in Paris, we never saw a single one. In Brittany, we were told that there had been one in St-Malo but that it had gone bankrupt.
But again, things are moving fast. This is summer 2000 and France is catching up with the Net on a daily basis! So if you desperately need to connect to the Net, be nice to the receptionists and they will let you hook up at the reception for a short time!
