Keep in mind that the (phone) line technically belongs to BT Openreach, "the Last Mile"; and that Orange/EE pass a significant proportion of that Line Rental cash to BTO for the USE/Rental of the line.
Any faults in the line are handled by BTO, Orange/EE acting as intermediaries in the process.
About 2 to 3 years back, BT took over the maintenance and possibly ownership of the Orange equipment in the exchanges. Others with better knowledge of that transfer may be able to enlarge on that aspect.
So the performance of your Broadband locally is equally or more dependent on BT etc as at any previous time.
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I have been progressively since 1997, with Freeserve, Wanadoo, Orange and EE for Dial-up and B; and directly with BT for basic phone services until about 15 months back, when I changed to the full Orange/EE contract, similar to the type that the OP asked about.
The "free" Anytime calls and 500 minutes of calls to Mobiles are particularly useful. Thus there is a saving of about £10 per months on the total costs.
BB runs about 14.71 Mb/s DS and 1 Mb/s US; and judging by the TBB Broadband Map, is the fastest in the area, at about 1,286 metres from the exchange.
Fibre recently announced as 31st May 2014, no Virgin cable.
My BB is also on the Samknows monitoring programme; and that generally confirms the TBB results.
Others in the area, mainly on SKY, are about 9 Mb/s typically down to 6 Mb/s, with the odd one about 12 Mb/s.
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