Orange and Spotify throttling

Hi Everyone,

New member here but thought I'd post about this since I can't see it in any recent threads relating to Orange specifically.

I have been a happy Orange customer for the past 18 months (once I switched away from the bundled router at least!) get decent speeds etc. For the past 6 months or so I have been having issues with Spotify during peak hours and I put it down to throttling. Initially it was only a tiny problem with intermittent stopping etc, however now it is completely unusable for me during peak hours entirely.

This is very frustrating and I finally emailed Orange about it hoping to hear that they were working on it etc but just got a reply saying that because Spotify uses P2P that is Spotify's choice and Orange will not be doing anything to rectify the fact that it is bundled with file sharing under their management system. So, so much for hoping it would get resolved.

Anyway, I guess I will be moving away from Orange soon (contract rolling at the moment). I was thinking of switching to BT Infinity, but that has now been delayed for my area to Summer last I checked and also I have read that BT also throttle Spotify (but won't admit to it? haha) so it's all a bit chaotic.

I thought I'd just post this for reference and anyone who is looking to perhaps join orange but is a big Spotify user may want to reconsider possibly.

Also, for anyone who shares my pain, I have found a kind of workaround that seems to allow Spotify to be used, although it's a bit of a hassle. Using a certain free vpn application that makes you appear to be in America seems to resolve the Spotify issues for me. I use the app personally for when I get links to news videos etc on US sites that don't work outside the US, just hook onto this VPN and it works, once I left it on by accident and then realised that my Spotify was working that evening!

The issue with it is that it slows my internet in general down a touch, and also if you use the free version it puts an ad at the top of every page which is ugly and annoying.

Anyway! Hope this can be of use to someone, any other tips for dealing with Spotify wholeheartedly welcomed!!

Charlie -

It's quite clear! Spotify uses P2P and Orange slows down P2P during peak hours.

They make no secret of it: http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/com.instranet.Inst...

I'm sorry if it's blatantly obvious, but I don't think it is.

Spotify is a legal service and as such should not be slowed down, it cannot be used for massive amounts of traffic etc, and people would not expect it to be limited in the same way that services used to shift huge amounts of data (mostly illegally) are.

When you say they make no secret of it, they do not mention Spotify by name and not everyone will realise Spotify uses peer to peer technology. In my opinion they should state that services such as Spotify 'may' (i.e. will) be affected by their management.

Charlie -

I understand your frustrations but I think Orange have a valid point. Spotify are the ones who choose to use P2P technology and must have been aware that it is throttled by many ISP's. IMO its a paid for service and downloads should be direct from their servers.

Ideally Orange wouldn't throttle any traffic but you cant have it all, they already provide truly unlimited downloads at a good price point.

Indeed indeed. I still find it slightly odd but I completely get what you say. I guess what would be good is if the premium subscribers could tick a box when they want to disable the P2P aspect of the application, so I could do that in the evenings.. I've now realised that a fairly simple solution is just to save my most used playlists to offline so I can use them.

And yes, unlimited downloads at a very good price is hard to argue with. Maybe this issue will be resolved some day!

Spotify rarely falls back to P2P. Most of the time it uses a dedicated server. Time to move to a proper ISP!

Yeah I hope it can be resolved. I have been considering one of these streaming services such as Spotify so thanks for bringing this up as I was not aware they used P2P.

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

Spotify rarely falls back to P2P. Most of the time it uses a dedicated server. Time to move to a proper ISP!

haha, yep! I am just waiting for my street to get BT fibre, then will be looking at the options! Was meant to have it by December just passed, but now it is delayed until June... hopefully won't be delayed past that!

As for spotify rarely using P2P, I can imagine that is the case, but also, I would imagine that even if it just uses a little then it is flagged up and any data it consumes would be limited speed? I don't know the inner workings at all, but that's how it would seem in my mind!

In reply to a post by astateoftrance:

Yeah I hope it can be resolved. I have been considering one of these streaming services such as Spotify so thanks for bringing this up as I was not aware they used P2P.

No worries at all, I figured not everyone would know, I had guessed but wasn't certain until told by them.

Charlie -

You could consider moving else where on a monthly contract until FTTC is live.

I would, but like I said, I've got a couple of my most played playlists saved on my computer now, and this internet is absurdly cheap, so will just hold out I'll make it

Charlie -