our building has just got fibre optic cable and thinking about changing from Free to french telecom , is it worth it and is it very fast

Just installed a couple;
- Yes it is v.fast BUT.... Orange's commercial offer is capping the available 100 Meg at around 20 Meg requiring you to pay quite a lot more to open it up to 80 or 100- I guess you have Orange offering the fibre. Their installation is very tricky needing a technician to install fibre terminator and then another technician to install fibre to ETHERNET box and then maybe even a 3rd one to do the Livebox ETHERNET VLAN config.- You cannot use any router other than Livebox. That is OK for average users but if you want FTTH for VPN or VoIP then you will be very frustrated as it is quasi-impossible to hook that up with the Orange Livebox - you would be better off with Free's FTTH offer if they will do it in your building.

Thanks for that information I understand 50% lol
so Free has FTTH .... what is that ? is it the philip stark box ?

FTTH = Fibre to the Home
This is the industry standard naming of the fibre technology and the French use this anglicised naming convention for fibre just like they used the ADSL terminology for telephone wire technology.
Yes Free also offers FTTH and they pursue a similar strategy to Orange - namely getting together a whole building's worth of subscribers before they commit to the expense of installing the fibre. You have nothing to lose by asking Free if they will do FTTH in your building. They record all such requests and you may find that yours is the request that tips the balance.

Sorry to high-jack this posting but was wondering if ChristopherL has any information about any future planned improvements to the internet service in the La Turbie area (06320). I have a maximum internet speed of only 1M which in this day and age is pretty pathetic.

Thanks.................

I wouldn't hold my breath for faster wired/cabled speeds in La Turbie - that whole area from Eze through St Laurent and up to La Turbie is a real black spot for cabling - if you live there and know how the access roads run, you can probably understand why.
I've seen some beautiful villas up there very frustrated by poor Internet speed. In recent past they used to solve that by using unlimited 3G+ routers but sadly it is nigh on impossible to get an affordable 3G+ contract anymore as all operators are capping them due to the huge overuse of the network.
Happily though there are other solutions. Internet via Satellite, once the domain of private yacht owners, has come to the masses and you can get some pretty decent download speeds with fairly decent monthly volume quotas on the French market today. Usually you have to stump up 300-400 Euros of equipment fee but you get material capable of between 2 Meg and 6 meg download speeds for between 40 and 80 Euros per month. There are some particular restrictions using satellite but for people living in black spots, whose primary interest is to boost their sustained download speed then it is a very interesting (and affordable) alternative.

we have orange installed now so can FREE use orange optic cable or do they have to instal their own cable along side Orange fibre optic cable