How to find out if you will have high-speed internet in your new home

Working from home – or teleworking – has become a permanent part of some people’s lives after the pandemic. Whether it might be for two days a week or for the full five, the quality of your home internet has become much more important.

So when looking to move home, how do you know if an area has superfast broadband? More than 25 million French homes were eligible for fibre optic internet in March 2021. Having fibre optic cables directly into your home allows you to benefit from a much faster internet connection, with speeds ranging from 300 Mb/s to 8 Gb/s.

So how can you check if your prospective new home might have access to fibre?

•  Look at the coverage map first. In France, the distribution of fibre is managed by ARCEP, an independent authority that maintains a map of fibre installed across the country. This map will not only tell you if a department, and each commune, has fibre, but if not, when it might be due to get it.  As a general rule, towns and cities are good, but some rural areas remain poor.

•  There are several websites that allow you to check the availability of the fibre network in a particular property, but you need to enter its address. It may be that more than one provider covers an area. The biggest providers include Orange, SFR and Bouygues, and all offer their own fibre eligibility test tool, otherwise, you can always have a look at the ARCEP official website here.

•  You can also ask the vendor of the property, or your estate agent. You might be able to spot the white box where the cable enters the property when you view the home – but don’t assume that the occupants might have taken advantage of the area’s fibre network. Not everyone has got connected – yet.