Question to Orange users?

Hi,

Just had Orange call me, I have a pay monthly phone with them, and they have tried to get us to put our broadband through them, they are now saying as from 1st July, there broadband is totally unlimited, as the fair use has been removed?

Anyone any comments on if they have joined them since 1st July, and is the service any better now it's run via BT, there price is a give away and would save us about £30 a month.

Lisa J

For views on FUP: http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/f/4020528-o...

In reply to a post by lisaj:

is the service any better now it's run via BT

No, my speed worsened by over 2 Meg = -16%.

In reply to a post by lisaj:

Hi,

Just had Orange call me, I have a pay monthly phone with them, and they have tried to get us to put our broadband through them, they are now saying as from 1st July, there broadband is totally unlimited, as the fair use has been removed?

Anyone any comments on if they have joined them since 1st July, and is the service any better now it's run via BT, there price is a give away and would save us about £30 a month.

Lisa J

Hi, that is a load of sales bull, no ISP could have a broadband totally unlimited use policy, but they are lenient with their fair use regulations.

It has always been considered broadband unlimited use up to 40 Gig a month. But I cannot find this written anywhere in their fair use policy, only reference to landline telephone use. Where it states for FREE evening and weekend and anytime calls, you are allowed 1000 calls per month.

I cannot find the post now! One guy on Orange LLU did post that he uses 100 Gig a month and said that one month he used 300 Gig and had no action from Orange, whether this is true or not, that may have been another load of bull.

With Orange I have 20 Meg unlimited broadband and landline telephone with FREE evening and weekend calls, plus line rental payable to Orange. I find the services excellent.

I have been moved from Orange LLU to Orange WBC and get about the same speeds, the ping has decreased.

I've just moved over from Sky and this was my experience :

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/freeserve/f/4010665...

Sign up through quidco.com and get an extra £150 cashback! I'm 2 weeks in and getting an excellent service (fast than sky LLU in every way) I've also been told that theres no throttling or limits, and 40gb of torrents and filehosts in 2 weeks later, and that has been my experience so far. Maybe I'll get a letter about it soon!

I'd go for it and take the money!

From my experience with Orange they lack sophisticated monitoring tools (a question of money which bedevils Orange) so when they're good they can be very good and when they're bad they can be very bad. The BT white label service they now offer should even things out. So I'd guess you stand a reasonable chance, but if they catch you out on what they think is abusing their service they can really clobber you, with a couple of months of 0.5Meg speeds, but perhaps might be persuaded to let you leave without penalty - I'd play the "I was given a guarantee the service was absolutely unlimited and I made clear at the time I wouldn't sign up otherwise" card, if the worst comes to the worst.

Bit of an update on this, media are reporting Orange say they've just scrapped any data download limits on home broadband, though it looks like they might still reserve the right to restrict speeds of P2P downloads in the event of network congestion during peak hours of 6pm-midnight. First bit of news after their Chief Executive announced his resignation!

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Jul-11 09:33:42)

Which media?

Nothing obvious on Newsnow

In reply to a post by smurf46:

Bit of an update on this, media are reporting Orange say they've just scrapped any data download limits on home broadband, though it looks like they might still reserve the right to restrict speeds of P2P downloads in the event of network congestion during peak hours of 6pm-midnight. First bit of news after their Chief Executive announced his resignation!

Have you got a link for that? I was repeatedly told the same by Orange staff during my recent sign up, and I questioned it as the website still shows a vague FUP whilst offering true unlimited would be a great feature for their sales to shout about. Since I've been with them I've downloaded well over 50gb in under a month, and zero sign of throttling at any time.

I've no proof for this, but I suspect that 99% of BB users never exceed 50gb. Imo they should just have a FUP which is actually fair - say a loose 150gb pm limit or something. Let the 1tb pm downloaders swamp the other providers - though these kind of users are so rare, its probably easier just to say totally unlimited without any small print.

I first saw this on ISP Review (news item) but it's confirmed by Orange's own network management page in broadband help - I don't think the link works when I tried to paste it but it's http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/support/personal/b...

That page does say no FUP but my package details say
"Broadband Starter (off-net) - £**** a month, up to 8 Meg speed, wireless router, unlimited usage allowance (fair use policy applies)." and all the options I could switch to include the same "unlimited usage allowance (fair use policy applies)."

y bt run ALL there service now so let us see ????? /

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-Jul-11 00:14:53)

In reply to a post by smurf46:

I first saw this on ISP Review (news item) but it's confirmed by Orange's own network management page in broadband help - I don't think the link works when I tried to paste it but it's http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/support/personal/b...

Thanks smurf. I think that settles the question of Oranges FUP once and for all. That info certainly wasn't online 2-3 weeks ago, though it confirms what I was told by several Orange employees.

Not quite. They still appear to have traffic management (as one expects with a service run by BT) so there might still be a question about whether Orange purchase enough backhaul. But the removal of the aggregate download limit (whatever it was) is good. And it does leave the t&cs in a bit of a mess, but this is how I interpret them!

For me personally theres been no traffic shaping at any time of the day - and that is using alot of torrents and well known filehosts. Maybe the shaping only applies to IPsteam?

IMPORTANT:

Orange buy from BT Wholesale who do not run the traffic management that BT Retail (Option 1,2,3 etc) use. The BT Retail management is RAN by BT Retail.

Same old rubbish here, less than 2mb in the evenings, haven't got round to jumping ship yet.

I can confirm it... Orange are indeed limiting P2P broadband speeds in the evenings.

Instead of ~1.2MB/sec download speed I got a couple of weeks ago, it's now capped at a minuscule 50KB/sec in the evenings.

Grrrrr. Streaming anyone?