What number should I call to get the exact time?

Call The Speaking Clock (La Pendule qui Parle) at +33 1 77 45 53 29 to hear the exact time, 24/7. The service is free (cost of a local call).

Does the 3699 speaking clock still exist?

The historic 3699 service operated by France Telecom was discontinued in July 2022 after 89 years of service. The Speaking Clock (La Pendule qui Parle) carries on this tradition with modern technology synchronized to atomic time.

How does The Speaking Clock work?

The service uses an Asterisk server connected to an NTP Stratum 1 infrastructure synchronized via GPS/Galileo. The voice is generated by Piper TTS speech synthesis, with the announcement 'Au quatrieme top, il sera...' (At the fourth beep, it will be...) followed by synchronization beeps.

The Speaking Clock

The 21st-century talking clock, heir to a French tradition since 1933

Call now

+33 1 77 45 53 29

24/7 Free*

Current time (NTP Stratum 1 synchronized)

--:--:--

* Cost of a local call from France

Traditional announcement format (spoken in French)

"Il est 14 heures 30 minutes"

("It is 2:30 PM")

then

"Au quatrième top, il sera 14 heures 31 minutes"

("At the fourth beep, it will be 2:31 PM")

BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP

Note: The phone service announces the time in French.

A French tradition since 1933

The history of the speaking clock in France

The speaking clock is a French institution. Invented by astronomer Ernest Esclangon, director of the Paris Observatory, it was inaugurated on 14 February 1933 and immediately became an iconic public service.

1933 - Inauguration of the speaking clock at the Paris Observatory. Marcel Laporte's voice announced the time on 78 rpm records.

1991 - The service became the famous 3699 number, dialled by millions of French people to set their watches.

2022 - After 89 years of continuous service, Orange announced the permanent shutdown of 3699 on 1 July 2022.

2026 - The Speaking Clock (La Pendule qui Parle) carries on this tradition with a modern infrastructure synchronized to atomic time.

Modern technology in the service of precision

The Speaking Clock is not just a nostalgic tribute: it is a cutting-edge technical service built on both our expertise in time synchronization and our experience in voice over IP.

🛰️

Stratum 1 Source

Direct synchronization with our NTP Stratum 1 server equipped with a GNSS receiver (GPS/Galileo) and PPS signal.

🎙️

Tom Voice (Piper TTS)

High-quality French speech synthesis, generated locally for minimal latency.

📞

SIP Telephony

Professional Asterisk infrastructure with SIP trunk provided by IPPI.com for maximum availability.

⏱️

Atomic Precision

Sub-millisecond drift thanks to our NTP infrastructure, a member of the global pool.

How it works: the infrastructure behind the voice

The Speaking Clock is powered by the same infrastructure that synchronizes thousands of servers around the world via the NTP Pool. To measure live the offset between your machine clock and our reference, the ntp-tester.eu live tool displays it second by second.

Three dedicated pages detail the technical chain that, at the other end of the phone line, delivers a voice announcement accurate to the millisecond:

The operator's history and architecture: Our NTP infrastructure since 2005 — 20+ years of operation, from the first volunteer server to Stratum 1 GPS on AS206014.
The time source used by Asterisk to align the beeps to the exact second: Source of time: NTS on Chrony — the cryptographic layer that authenticates upstream NTP servers.
Why we talk about "Stratum 1" for this speaking clock: NTP stratum hierarchy — how each level of the hierarchy maps to the accuracy reachable at that tier.

🖥️

NTP Infrastructure

Stratum 1 & 2 Servers

Raspberry Pi + GPS

Secure synchronization

Acknowledgements

Guillaume for coming up with the name "La Pendule qui Parle" (The Speaking Clock).
IPPI.com for providing the SIP trunk and French phone number.

Free NTP Tools

Three independent tools to diagnose your time synchronization: