The nice people at Orange sent me a special offer yesterday – as I’m with them for my mobile, I can have broadband for £5/month (+£12.75 line rental), unlimited usage, up to 20 meg, router supposedly worth £95 etc.

Previously I’ve got up to about 8meg on TalkTalk but I’ve just left them due to their catastrophic inability to actually fix the recurring fault on my line. So, are Orange any better?

orange have been excellent for my parents for the last 10 years – how ever the new netgear modems they give out are terrible – even with the latest firmware ours dropped all the time

changed to a cisco router and it has been back to faultless since

Excellent but the routers are lousy. Got my own and just ditched theirs. Ben with them about 4 years now after various episodes of hell with virgin, tiscali etc…

Yep,
I couldn’t find a better deal for landline and broadband, and what’s more they called me to ask if I’d like to pay less!
But when the old Livebox gave up, +1 for the netgear comment. Its a bit naff.

I’ve got an old sky router you can you have if you want to flash the BIOS and set it up for Orange

btw

broadband for £5/month (+£12.75 line rental),

So £15.75 a month then, including a landline that you;ll never use

I got the same offer – had ignored it previously because I had read some bad reports and couldn’t be arsed to change and have it all go to pot. But very tempted to change, especially given the good reports above.

BTW – I was offered a £40 M&S voucher so if that’s not been mentioned you might want to bring it up when you contact them!

So £15.75 a month then, including a landline that you;ll never use

Yeah, I know. 🙁 Is there anyone that does broadband only? Not interested in a landline.

Excellent but the routers are lousy.

On our third Livebox. Ok, theyre free (kind of) but if we could be bothered to upgrade, we would. Its not the top of our spending priorities ATM.

They were quite tight on the BW limits, I got capped a few times then moved to Virgin and been happy ever since.

Too much porn… by brf, on Flickr

They have probably stopped sending the liveboxes and the Netgear routers now and you’ll get the new Brightbox.

Had my a week or two now and it’s excellent, also has a USB port so can use it for network storage etc.

I know everyone’s experience can vary, but I have never dealt with a more unhelpful bunch in my life. I was treated with utter contempt and went elsewhere the second my contract was over. Truly truly awful.

@watty – When was this? Orange Broadband team have been through a massive shake up over the last year or two and are now topping awards for their Customer Services.

IMO the product is good, Service is o.k, price is the chepest…

they’re fine until anything goes wrong – then it’s 2 hours to a call center in India.

I’ve had it for around 2/3 years and had to phone them around 4 times during that time. Each time was a total nightmare.

You get what you pay for IMO.

I am with Watty with this one, when I had problems they were truely woeful. I have never had the misfortune to deal with such a useless bunch in my entire life. Eventually things got so bad that Orange recommended I terminate my contract.

Been with Orange Broadband since December 2011 truly shockingly slow speeds, drops my connection constantly, customer service shocking. Swapping back to BT today (i hope), i’m having to pay Orange £200 to leave their rubbish service.

Is there anyone that does broadband only? Not interested in a landline.

No, unless you rely on 3G.

Openreach rent the line to your ISP. Your ISP rents the line to you. The line is just a pair of copper wires between your house and the exchange. What you run along it isn’t their concern (save that voice and data are charged differently – voice by minutes, data by month).

@MaxRocks – I cancelled last June. I let rip at the retentions bloke, spelling out issue after issue, he said it was something they were working on. I wished him luck.

I’m very happy with them. Like you would, I get £5 pm discount for having their mob. phone. I think I pay £7.25 + line rental. 15 mb speed, the netgear modem has never dropped connection, reasonable reach of wireless signal (stuggles on my top floor – 3 storey house).
I can only compare to previous experience with Tesco, 1mb speed, constantly dropping connection and very expensive by comparison (£18 pm without telephone). Switching to Orange was a massive improvement and cheaper.

I can imagine, I know it’s improving, it will take time. As I said Orange Home Broadband tops OFCOM customer satisfaction survey.

BTW Wellhung, Orange broadband infastructure is provided by BT

BTW Wellhung, Orange broadband infastructure is provided by BT

Which is precisely the problem. The nice lad/lass in the offshore call-centre has no more idea of what/when/why/where your problem will/will not be sorted than my dead Mum! I felt like I’d wasted a year of my life every time I called Orange customer ser…..

Orange broadband was voted second worst provider by Which readers in this months mag. Worst of all for tech support. Just for balance like. I dont use them btw.

Who came rock bottom out of interest?

Who came rock bottom out of interest?

AOL broadband. Didnt even know the were still going!

Top = Zen, BE, Utility Warehouse, Plusnet, O2…..

In my experience (I could be wrong) most ISP’s have to fall back onto BT if there’s a line problem anyway as BT tend to own the lines (they certainly own all of them where I am).

This is one of the reasons that I like Plusnet, they’re not really any better at sorting line issues as they have to get BT on the case however their call centre is in Yorkshire so there’s no language barrier etc…

BT own plusnet

I think there needs to be some proper public education on how broadband/phone lines are wired up.

BT’s division, Openreach, owns all the infrastructure from the master socket in your house back to the exchange. The ISPs with their own networks have their kit in the exchange and you link back to their network from here. ISPs who are resellers of other ISPs use the networks of BT Wholesale or other ISPs.

So, when you complain about line issues, they’re all BT (Openreach). Other things, like speed management are down to the network of your ISP.

Easy, huh? 😀