In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Quite why Orange sent engineers out to tweak noise margin when this is something done from the comfort of a call centre desk I've no idea.

From my own experience, I would guess a breakdown of communication between Orange non-technical staff and BT Wholesale.

You tell Orange that your line is running slower than what it should/did in the past and that it needs a reduction in NM to fix. Orange haven't the knowledge to understand this and just tell BTW, who actually runs their BB, that there is something unspecific wrong with your line. So BTW commissions OR engs to visit and test your line. They find nothing wrong with it and report back that the NM needs tweaking. Eventually BTW reduces the NM as originally suggested and all is hunky dory .

Just out of curiosity, why are they moving customers off LLU kit? Surely that's a waste of man hours? I asume it's cheaper for them somehow?

Orange aren't very forthcoming. But I think you're bang on with costs: they lost about 25% of their customer base for home broadband over the last couple of years and changed their contracted support engineers (they don't directly employ any for fixed broadband) to BT (who of course have to maintain their own kit anyway), and the decomissioning was part of that contract. Their financial reports are all about saving money to pay back the Orange UK JV's loans to its parents (two of the most indebted European companies!). So as BT offer the whole package (including customer support) as a "white label" which Orange can brand . . . go figure, as they say!

Orange has got into bed with BT! In effect they have subcontracted BT to manage their BB while Orange do the marketing and billing. For a fee of course, but I'm sure their accountants have done the sums. Orange no longer has to maintain their network infrastructure, so that must be a huge saving. Doubt if many man-hours are lost; it must be just a matter of BT throwing a switch in the exchange, just like when you migrate ISPs.

I'm not sure who does the support. There has been a slight improvement lately, so it could be BT or could be Orange staff being moved to BT.

so how does swapping from LLU to regular broadband save them money?

In reply to a post by garyparson:

Just out of curiosity, why are they moving customers off LLU kit? Surely that's a waste of man hours? I asume it's cheaper for them somehow?

I reckon Orange is looking ahead, now is the right time to get out of LLU when they can still sell-on the gear� maybe to TalkTalk.

http://www.fttcbroadband.co.uk/tag/orange/

http://www.cxo.eu.com/news/orange-favours-bt-broadband/

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/357307/orange-...

I would understand that if they took people off the service in an exchange that has the newer speeds but as mine hasnt it makes no sense whatsoever??

In reply to a post by garyparson:

I would understand that if they took people off the service in an exchange that has the newer speeds but as mine hasnt it makes no sense whatsoever??

Was it BT (just left to "get on with it" by Orange)? When it comes to Orange's bottom line I suspect they see the opportunity to sign up more customers on a competitive price on the 21CN exchanges (which are growing and exceed the number of their former unbundled exchanges which had stalled), than the no. of upset LLU customers now stuck on 20CN. That's life in modern business. You can't serve anybody if you don't turn a profit: like you have to breathe to live. They're not the first ISP to "abandon" unprofitable customers; and won't be the last!

EDIT: I suspect Orange have to pay BT to rent LLU DSLAM space in the exchange; and as the main benefit of LLU in term of costs was avoiding high backhaul costs, but Orange (unlike Sky, TT, C&W and O2) didn't have their own backhaul or buy in an ISP that did, I always found it madness that Orange maintained their LLU for as long as they did, not that they've now abandoned it.

Edited by deleted (Sun 14-Aug-11 11:38:14)

Expanding LLU means spending capital money and ties funds up

Also there is a lack of people experienced in running broadband, i.e. the good people are not cheap

Less need for expensive technical staff and updating old LLU hardware