Anyone Recently Joined Orange on LLU?

Say, since the New Year?

Since their collaboration with BT, there are rumours that Orange are putting new joiners on non-LLU only, even when LLU is available at the exchange!.

Maybe it's only when Orange estimate that user will get less than 8 Meg. But Orange's estimates of connection speeds of lines new to them are over-cautious. My LLU line syncs at 16 Meg confirming Orange's estimate of 15.5 Meg. But my other non-BB identical line, which once sync'ed at 16 Meg with O2, is estimated by Orange at only 9.5 Meg.

I am interested in scotching or confirming such rumours.

Thats interesting, I'm thinking I may have to switch ISP in the not to distant future and was looking at alternatives...

Orange is one of only 4 LLU providers on my exchange (the others being Sky, Talk Talk and AOL) so I entered my line number into their checker...

and it turns out they estimate that despite the fact that it's an LLU line and despite the fact that I currently get 15 meg on my current line, they state that they can only supply 7.5 meg on my line.

I think it's quoting from BT Wholesale's line checker which also estimates exactly the same line speed. So a bit of a mystery there.

Yes, like everyone else, they rely on BTw's fallible database, as they have no prior knowledge of your actual line.

If the posts in this section are anything to go by it looks like they're refusing to put people on LLU even if the line supports it - a noise margin of 11-12db is high enough to support a much higher sync speed but they don't seem to want to take anyone off BT Ipstream for some reason...

Time to look at other ISP's instead I think. Pity, it looked promising. Oh well I guess thats what thinkbroadband is for!

I am sorry to pass on bad news, but I had an email from Orange today...the important bit is below

"Due to new agreements with BT, all of our customer's are due to be
migrated back to IPStream over the next 12 months. This is in an effort
to provide a faster, fairer and more stable service to our customers"

So we've all been screwed!

Jason

That seems consistent (perhaps a speeding up of timescales) with what I understood from their investor strategy at the first Everything Everwhere results presentation (available on their website) last October for the "turnaround" strategy for their Home broadband service (not referring to the merger of mobile services - which is a different segment of the presentation) which included as part of the outsourcing contract to BT:

(quote) • System implementation, customer migration and network
decommissioning over 2 years (I assume from their reported contract sign date in April 2010). They helpfully tell us the outsourcing will be "invisible to customers" so they optimistically think we won't notice!!

I think their next quarterly results are published at the end of this month, so we might find out more (in their strange marketing-speak) then?

Edited by smurf46 (Sun 13-Feb-11 14:06:02)

So they are actively discontinuing their LLU network? They do not mention that when they sell you "upto 20 Mbps download speeds" do they? Can they provide 20 Mbps speeds on ipstream? If they cannot then I have been lied to and I want out!

I have not received such an email.

Do you Sync at over 8 Meg?

Cuz greater speeds cannot be achieved on IPStream. Only 21CN enabled exchanges with WBC/WBMC (which is not IPStream) can provide up to 24 Meg speeds.

So that beggars the Q of what they are going to do with users, like myself, who Sync at 9 to 24 Meg and have had these speeds confirmed by Orange. They cannot put us on 8 Meg IPStream without violating our contracts.

In reply to a post by smurf46:

first Everything Everwhere results presentation (available on their website)

Where?

If

In reply to a post by smurf46:

the outsourcing will be "invisible to customers" so they optimistically think we won't notice

then it is impossible to put us all on (8Meg) IPStream; many of us will need to be put on 21CN WBC to retain our speeds.

I sync at 7264.

I had a message from Orange later in the day which I wasn't going to post but I will because, hey, let's face it, they are not exactly keeping us up to date with their plans.

"I have looked further into our new policy on registrations and am
pleased to confirm that when BT's Fibre optic enabled service (WBC) is
enabled in your area, currently scheduled for April of this year, you
should find that you will be moved to this service within a few months
of activation. I cannot quote actual speeds except they should be
substantially faster then ADSL2+ service your previous provider used."

So good news. I cannot see anyone being cut off from LLU if they have it and this new service is not in place.