Orange sees broadband subscriber exodus Customers are continuing to desert Orange's ADSL offerings, the firm's results revealed today. In the six months to 30 June 44,000 net broadband subscribers quit the firm, leaving it with 1.06 million. Orange said its UK broadband customer base was "levelling off", but figures released in February showed that just 4,000 net …
i've been with Orange for years, but I'm likely to move soon, too - it's an OK service at an OK price, but recently all the changes have been negative - for instance, removing the possibility to use the "free" web space via FTP. The Orange Livebox never worked because we've still got a Freeserve username, which it won't accept. No big deal, as I only wanted to use it for the phone option anyway - but they've now pulled that too because we didn't use it - because it didn't work - and their emails on both these subjects were flagged up as spam by, er, Orange, so I didn't actually get to see them until too late. The only thing that's stopped me so far is the belief that all ISPs are fundamentally crap...
...it may also have something to do with the shocking price. Until this month Orange charged a compulsory £30 connection fee. If you don't have a monthly contract with them you pay what is basically a really high price for a really poor service.
...And then, you've got the £7 extra or so per month if you're not "in an orange broadband area" (hah). Yet still customers buy it! I'm with Sky broadband, and I'm happy to admit the speeds are disappointing and the uptime is poor. But I'm paying £5/month for basically unlimited downloads. I can't complain!
I think what you mean is that all *cheap* ISPs are crap [1], and most (all?) mass market ISPs are crap. ISPs from AAISP to Zen and a few others in between may be generally unheard of but they generally also have a good proportion of happy punters (though as they are reliant on BTwholesale for connectivity, that may vary). They also tend to be unaffordable for mickeytakers, which can only help both customer and ISP.
Tune of the day for this article: Todd Rundgren's "I Hate My ISP".
[1] Metronet, prior to being bought by Plusnet, were the exception that proved the rule.
My mobile used to be on Orange. I was loyal for about 8 years and I was a big spender but they got so bad I eventually walked. What a terrible company, it's such a shame, they used to be so good. I'm now on a Virgin quad play - cable TV, free landline, 2M internet and 300/300 mobile for £32/month.
I hear Virgin ADSL (ex-NTL) isn't clever but my ex-Birmingham Cable service is excellent. I always get 2048Kb/s no matter what and it's NEVER down. I just downloaded 20GB of torrents and didn't get capped either!
So I strongly disagree with the assertion that all cheap ISPs are fundamentally crap - though I accept that most of them probably are.
I've been with them for 18 months and found them to be pretty good.
Livebox works fine.
Great download speeds (700k)
It's unlimited (or I haven't fallen foul of their fair use policy at least)
Always reliable.
Customer care seems good - I sent them a change of bill-payer letter and I got call back just to say they'd received the letter. Spot on!
I'm in the centre of Manchester admittedly, but I've got no complaints.
...in my experience.
Their 3G coverage sucks!
Their Broadband/ADSL service sucks! (It stopped working completely in the evenings.)
Their Customer Service sucks! - and when you can get through to complain all you get is apologies and broken promises.
I'm with Talktalk for home phone and broadband now. They're cheap and it works all the time. Not only does it work but they rang me up out of the blue last week to see how I was getting on with their service - Yes! THEY RANG ME!
I told them the phone was fine but the broadband was a little slow (650kb/s at 3 miles from the exchange) and they said they'd get an engineer to check. Ten minutes later they ring back and I've now got 1.3mb/s free, gratis and for nothing.
I'm with 3 for my mobile phone now - it works great - coverage everywhere I go, its cheaper than Orange and I could get 3mb/s data (capped at 3GB/month) if I wanted it, for just £5 extra per month.
Orange, as a company will be dead soon. Lets hope the other ISPs learn their lesson.
"I'm with Sky broadband, and I'm happy to admit the speeds are disappointing and the uptime is poor. But I'm paying £5/month for basically unlimited downloads. I can't complain!"
Likewise with TalkTalk. Connection speed can be a bit variable at peak times, but generally, outages are very rare, 40GB/month download limit - and it's free with a TalkTalk landline which works out cheaper than BT (OK, it's by about 2p/month cheaper, but it's still cheaper...)
I wouldn't want to rely on it for business, but for general home use with email, surfing, downloading and online gaming, it's fine.
And compared to Orange (my sis was with Freeserve, which became Orange via Wanadoo and has always been too lazy to shift) - TalkTalk is a True Consumer Champion. Now there's a scary sentence...!
Orange. Dead as the proverbial avian nailed to its perch and pining for the fjords. Beautiful plumage...
I used to get 2.4megs out of the 8meg I was paying for, due to my position relative to the exchange. Rubbish but not their fault I suppose, as the neighbours on different ISPs get the same.
In February I upgrded to 'MAX' broadband (sounds really, really fast), AND took out 2 mobiles (on £35pm Dolphin contracts). I also get free calls via my BT line and a second line on my LiveBox including free international calls. I get all this for a not-very-grand total £56pm after some haggling and part-exchanging an old phone. That's cheap.
Did I mention I can't get any faster than 0.4meg ever since? Cheap, in every sense of the word is what it is.
Emails to technical support recommended basic things I've already done. Now they've then pointed me to a call centre in India, which is only 5p a minute.
That's quite cheap, don't you think?.
Surely "700K" is a pretty average download speed... anyone on your average 8Mb connection ought to get that...
Now the 1.6-1.8 MB/s I can pull out of my Be service when I get a good server to download from... that IMHO is a good download speed on domestic broadband.
Full DVDs of Linux distros in half an hour, I can't complain.
My home ISP is Zen. 2.7km from the exchange. 6+ mbps evenings and weekends. Started at 1.2 mbps, I complained, they got it fixed.
Can't say fairer than that.
However - you get what you pay for. Simple as that!
I don't think there is such a thing as 'good', 'cheap' ADSL. Is that really surprising?
that causes people to leave Orange. Why they don't provide a router that is actually reliable (and has clear, easy to see and interpret (as in Netgear) indicator LEDs) I'll never know.
I have 2 Orange clients, both have had unnecessary grief with the livebox.
One has a reasonably reliable ADSL service, the other has a service that's as changeable as our current English summer.
What people should realise is that ISPs in general have a great deal of difficulty making money. In fact the only ones who can get a decent return are the ones who own some of the backbone.
My son did an ISP business case for a university assignment and despite what many people think, this field is far from a licence to print money. In fact, most ISPs can only make a buck from the bundled offerings.
My own, very long term ISP which has undergone numerous upheavals over it's existence only makes money from me because I also have my voice services with them. They run their own broadband infrastructure and provide a decent enough service but I have noticed that recently they have started to squeeze in small but noticeable ways (uploads in some plans now count towards monthly limits etc.). Such is life!
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