Roundabouts and swings at Everything Everywhere Everything Everywhere has lower revenues and fewer customers, though you wouldn't know it from the annual figures which show year-on-year growth of 1.5 per cent and contract numbers rising. The details, inevitably, show that the growth is "excluding regulatory impact", while the 33 per cent increase in contract customers only …
T-mobile's 3G has been great for ages here!
Note that the 2G roaming already allows EDGE on Orange, which works very well - big improvement when out of T-mobile coverage!
When I was on holiday, though, I was glad of the 2G roaming, which allowed me an Orange signal for voice and 2G data.
[The post is required, and must contain letters. Apparently :)]
EE sound like they've inherited at least part of T-mobile's rubbish service (though I've been told that Orange have similarly rubbish service). As such, I expect they'll continue to rely on silly minimum contract lengths, silly contract structures (not that long ago if you wanted to get an Android phone you had to also get one of the silly contracts with something like a bajillion bundled minutes, even though you're clearly buying an android phone for the data capabilities). And then there's the retarded approach they've taken to data allowances.
Like many UK telcos, it's almost like they don't *want* to make money by offering a good product at a fair price, instead preferring to rely on a never-ending stream of gimmicky bullshit like MMS or videocalling or unlimited-except-for-all-the-ways-it-isn't data packages.
Like 30 days. Dreadful, I find it terrible to be stuck in a contract for such a long time. http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/sim-only/tariffs/
And if you think it's retarded not to charge users who exceed their streaming/downloading limit (note that there's no limit on “surfing and email“), but simply to stop streaming / downloading from working until the next billing period, then that's your choice! I like it, it keeps my bills down! Excess data (e.g. at 10p/MB, on Three) can quickly add up.
Yes yes, for sim-only contracts they offer 30-day rolling contracts - if you want to get a handset through them the last several times I looked you were either paying at least £100 up front (at which point why not just buy it sim-free and be done with it) or an 18-month or longer contract. And this was at a time when the norm with other providers was to offer 12-month or 18-month contracts, with the longer contracts having an incentive in terms of monthly price.
I'm not arguing against having a data cap, I am however arguing against the retarded doublethink of having a data package for Android phones that they explicitly called "unlimited" and then suffixed with a Fair Use Policy that lets them charge you if they decide you've gone significantly over your 3GB allowance. Why not just say you get 3GB per month, anything extra is chargeable? Sure, they're not unique in this, but that doesn't make it any less stupid.
They wanted £250 for me to upgrade to a Blackberry 9800 from a Curve 8900, that was on a £45 per month contract. I'm dumping that contract in a month or so, and I've already got a 9800 for £30 a month. Their customer retentions people seemed to think that as an existing customer I wasn't worth their time to deal with. Went back with Orange on the new contract as well because we get good contract discounts a month, but I was shocked that basically I could have a 9300 and enjoy it according to Orange.
Apart from sounding naff it means absolutely nothing. It could be the brand name of a roving bus ticket or the latest slogan of MI5. What on earn were these morons thinking? With T-Mobile at least (not so much Orange which was an equally stupid name) they had an internationally recognised brand that clearly nailed what it stood for. Why the hell are they dumping all that customer recognition for some meaningless bland phrase? Talk about change for its own sake.
T-Mobile could be a roving hot drinks distribution platform. (i.e. snackbar)
Orange has been around since at least 1994, way back before T-Mobile had even been thought of. Remember "Mercury One2One"?
Orange as a brand has worldwide recognition, which was used in several countries by Hutchison Telecom (including Australia and Israel) and now it is a part of France Telecom it has become their primary customer facing brand throughout Europe and the French Overseas Territories (everything they do in France is now branded Orange).
Let's not forget, Everithing Everywhere is a holding company, not a customer brand. EE was created (from my perspective) purely as a method for FT to get their hands on DT's UK operations and for DT to start pulling out of the UK market without upsetting the regulators. FT own half the company, and are owed the outstanding value of the rest by DT (who were loaned the money by FT to pay for their half). When it comes time to pay, I reckon the cash strapped DT will simply hand over the keys. Hey presto, Orange PCS Ltd is resurrected. T-Mobile is kaputt.
The reason is the 100,000 net contract adds, compared to the 1m net prepayed lost. This means that higher-ARPU contract customers represent a larger proportion of the overall base, which is why overall ARPU has nudged higher.
Our sales team are moving back to Vodafone because Orange is just completely unreliable. I've contacted Orange on a number of occasions and they just shrug and point out that they don't have very good service in London.
In f*cking LONDON!
I could understand if it was in glennowhere in jockland but not in London.
“not good service in the capital” is a pretty weak thing to say! But they really should have suggested (and walked you through) switching on cross-network roaming. Being able to use Orange _and_ T-mobile cells makes a _big_ difference, even in the big cities!
(I left Orange many years ago for various reasons, now with T-mobile, but the network-share has been a boon!)
All they are doing is checking the site for "adult, offensive and possibly illegal material". I for one think that is quite responsible trying to ensure that youngsters aren't privvy to some of the smut and filth on the web. I have blue coat protection on my computer so my son can't stumble onto anything that he shouldn't be seeing - you use the word snooping, I would call it being socially responsible and protecting people.
Why is it that some people think that the general public should pay for the bringing up of other people's children by losing their privacy? It's your responsibility, not mine.
You're right in one respect: this sort of protection should be available, but only where it's been asked for. It shouldn't be that difficult from a technical perspective to put into place parental controls that only affect the phone in question and not everybody's handset.
However even phones with such protection turned off are still having their traffic processed and examined in an unauthorised way, contrary to RIPA, the Computer Misuse Act and PECR to name but three pieces of legislation. Websites are having their content used for commercial gain without authorisation.
Are you really OK with this?
The availability of Blue Coat's service is fine; it's having it turned on for all customers (including those who have a contract and pay by credit card, both of which require you to be an adult) that's stupid.
Yes, parents should have the option of requesting this for the phone they buy little Johnny. If the parent buys a phone for their kid, doesn't bother familiarising themselves with what it can do, then gives it to the kid who promptly manages to find smut with it, how is that the tech provider's fault? It's the fault of the parent who didn't pay attention to what they gave their kid, and is in that sense no different than giving a ten-year-old the car keys, then trying to blame the car manufacturer when the kid prangs the car into the nearest tree.
Opting in to something like this is fine, but why do all of us* have to be opted in by default just in case someone's a moron and hasn't paid attention to the functionalities of the New Shiny they bought their kids?
* by "us" I mean in this case Vodafone customers, but the principle applies on a general basis.
3-5 years ago Orange started signing up pay-as-you-go customers to a "free evening calls offer" where you got 600 minutes of Orange-to-Orange evening calls each month that you topped up by 10 pounds or more. Most PAYG customers who had it are finding that this offer is now expiring (a few months either side of now), so will be looking at other options. It could be a different PAYG tarriff, but in my case, I went to a SIM-only contract (I reckon I'll be making more calls, and more daytime calls, for much the same monthly spend). This also means that the other 2 (or maybe three?) Orange PAYG SIMs I have kicking around on different tarriffs will probably begin to fall out of any use.
Rising or falling numbers of PAYG customers is probably almost meaningless, given you get SIMs bundled with non-contract phones etc etc.
It's not necessarily meant to viewed by everybody. Subscription content comes to mind. I may pay for access to the times and sunday times, but my ISP in all liklihood hasn't done so and yet it would be making money off the back of the paid for reporting being viewed in the website should it ever use this same system.
Then there's personal information and other types of data viewed over the internet that most people would never consent to have read by unknown and above all untrusted third parties. Blood test results come to mind, since I'm a transplant patient, have the tests on a regular basis and apparently now have the option to access them online. Would anybody want these seen by complete strangers?
I might add that the URL alone can often include information that could potentially identify a given user, and that's not even considering any of the content of the page itself that may have also been captured.
The fact that they aren't selling the data is irrelevent. It's being intercepted and processed without consent and that's illegal.
As for Google there is such a thing as a robots.txt file. Google tend to respect it if and when it finds one. You can tell Google not to spider your site and they won't do so.
Nice try at defending them. Perhaps you would like to make another attempt?
I have a HD2 and it drives me mad. its always switching between networks and then informs me of roaming charges. 9 times out of 10 I drop the caller as it switches.
Best part is when the call simply fades away. hello, hello, hello you there?
Trouble is that in North Devon they are the strongest of all the carriers so got to live with them.
... taking my contract elsewhere. Not sure if it's the merger with T-Mobile but the Orange network can't cope in Manchester. Signal frequently drops, calls lost when the phone is switching between cells, many calls go straight to answer phone when the phone shows full bars.
It's not just me - everyone I know on Orange is complaining. The future's elsewhere everytime.
I wonder how many of their PAYG customers are only staying with the network for Orange Wednesdays, or the equivalent T-Mobile deal with Blockbuster Video?
I Stopped using Orange for calls around a year ago. (Poor coverage, outrageous charges for data), but I kept the SIM in an old phone with a small amount of credit on it for Orange Wednesdays. Every now and again I make a call so that the account stays active on their system and they don't cut me off, but other than that, the account gets no use at all. I dare say there are plenty of other "customers" like that.
If Orange subtracted those from their count of customers, then they would probably have to report an even sharper decline in the number of PAYG customers. They won't though because if they did it would hurt the share price.
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