So You Want to Be an ISP in the South of France?

(a public service FAQ)

Part 1: Introduction

I had moved to the south of France three years earlier, to live happily ever after with Dominique, while getting out of the Newport RI rat race where I had been a well-known heating consultant (yikes!). I had spent those three years settling in, building us a house (do unto yourself that which you’d spent too many years explaining to others how to do), wrote a book (on heating), and then coasted awhile, pretending to be in semi-retirement while I perfected my cooking and golfing skills. The male achiever in me, however, was getting antsy.

A few months earlier (June), I had discovered that it had become feasible to have an Internet connection from Albi, our small albeit illustrious town, by dialling in to Toulouse, our nearby (70 kms or, if you prefer, 40 miles distant) 'big city’. In August, after an agreeable couple of months barbequeing Ribs à la mode de Denny for skeptical frenchpersonnes of our acquaintance, grinding my golf handicap down to 12, and spending lots of time on the Net, two critical events occurred:

The first was a meal with a group of acquaintances and their friends in an old barn converted temporarily into a restaurant for the ten day duration of the Laugh Festival de Vaour. We were all having a jolly old time, chomping away at our quiches and andouillettes, when I mentioned that I had just hooked into the Internet and had already had the thought that maybe the future salvation of the human race could be found in all those bits and bytes racing through the pipes.

I could not have imagined what would happen next. The laugh festival turned into a rant and rave festival, and it was proposed to me, in no specific order, by this group of very intelligent, unusually dynamic individuals that:

1) the Net surely represented the next assault on free humanity by the Brain Police,

2) it was a plot by the rich computer literate to manipulate the poor, who would never, ever be able to afford a computer,

3) and for heaven’s sake, what was wrong with the Minitel?

To put this into context, you have to appreciate that France is years behind America, England, or Scandinavia in Net-ness. In August 1995, few people here knew what the Internet was, let alone what it was about to become.

More to the point, the French are always up for a good debate and yours truly had blithely walked into the lion’s mouth!

Event #2

The second important event of August '95 was that I received my first post-Internet phone bill from France Telecom. For those of you who don’t know them, they are the French state telco monopoly. We will be talking a lot about them throughout this FAQ.

The bill was for 1500 francs/month (300U$) for 20 hours of connect time. These numbers are based on the ubu-esque (this is the french equivalent of kafka-esque) way that France Telecom operates the network, and specifically, the way they divvy up the national territory into local calling zones. A Toulousain calling Albi will pay a local call. An Albigeois calling Toulouse, however, will pay full long-distance minus 10%. I don’t know if this is a plan to lure frenchpersonnes back to the inner cities, but the result is that it costs me 10% less again to call my brother in Seattle using an international callback service, which gives me an American dial-tone and American international phone rates.

But Wait!

Being the clever entrepreneur type that I am, I realized what I had to do. On January 15, 1996, after 4 months of filling out forms, ordering equipment, and howling at the moon, I started I-Link, “Internet en Pays de Cocagne”.

It’s been quite a ride. When I started out, I had everything to learn about the Internet business, and just a little less than that to learn about doing business in France.

Furthermore...

Over the years I’ve met or corresponded with a number of anglo-americans who had told me that they would like nothing better than to sell the ranch and the mutual funds, then come settle down in southern France, where people still leave their doors unlocked, invite the whole family in for f-a-b-u-l-o-u-s meals a couple of times a week, and the doctors don’t ask you how you’re going to pay for it before they sew your forearm back onto your elbow after an unfortunate lawnmower event.

So here’s my attempt at an Expat’s Living (and ISPing) in France FAQ. A romantic subject, for sure, but one where the pitfalls are almost impossible to prepare for. Is this why the French felt obliged to invent Existentialism? And if so, who said they aren't courteous to foreign visitors?

Who am I?

Hey, check out my home page.

Footnote

Today is August 5, 1996. This is significant because

• it is dawning on me again, as it does every year at this time, that France will be closed until the beginning of September.

  and

• it actually looks like when September finally arrives, I-Link will be embarking on phase III of its life-cycle. I can hardly believe it. I can hardly wait.

On to Part II