Orange Broadband

A few years ago, when before Orange took over Wanadoo, I signed up to Wanadoo Broadband. I initially had a 512KB connection which compared to the old dial-up was amazing. Then an upgrade to 1MB followed, and again another upgrade to 2MB. All this time there were never any problems with the connection, and speeds were consistent and fast.

Sometime last year, Orange (having subsequently taken over Wanadoo) announced I was to receive a free upgrade to the 'up to 8MB' service. Great, I thought. It would be especially handy when downloading files.

After the upgrade was completed, I saw that my line speed was around 2.5MB. While this was a bit of a disappointment, subsequent reading of how ADSL works showed up the fact that unless you live right on top of your local exchange, you are unlikely to get anywhere 8MB. Still, at least I wasn't paying any more for it.

Then around Christmas 2006, I started to notice that the connection was dropping regularly. This is a real pain, especially if you are in the middle of an online transaction - did the transaction go through or not? My hardware hadn't changed, so I was confident the problem was either down to Orange or the exchange. I was due to move house in February, so didn't do much about it, as I thought moving house would at least rule out the possibility of dodgy internal phone wiring.

So I moved house, and it took Orange 3 weeks to get the Broadband up and running at my new address. Once it was up and running, what did I find? Surprise, Surprise, regular disconnections. Not only that, but the speeds were abysmal - typically between 200-400kbps. The only time I saw it higher was early one Sunday morning, when I got speeds of 1.5Mb. This proved that higher speeds were possible, and so it was either bad contention at the exchange, or some other unknown Orange problem.

As the service was pretty much unusable for most of the time, I phoned them up to see what they would do about sorting the connection out. This is where the fun and games started.

Their Technical Support is located in India, and they clearly read from a script (which seems to include the phrase 'I apologize for the inconvenience' every other sentence), which indicates that they have no real expertise. After explaining the problem, the guy I spoke to finally ran out of options from his script and said he was going to arrange a line test. Call back in 24 hours for the results of the test, he said. I duly called back, navigated the convoluted menu system, explained the problem again and asked for the test results - this time I was told that the line test department don't work at the weekend, please call back after 24 hours (which would be a Monday). Annoyed, I agreed to call back.

When Monday came, I called back. This time I was told that the line test results were not back and I should call back in 24 hours. This was starting to piss me off. I asked them to call me back when they had the results, as it was costing me a fortune to keep calling their premium rate number. They couldn't do this, they explained, as it would be a breach of account security to access an account unless the account holder was on the line. In that case, I asked, how were they going to update my account with the line test results if I wasn't on the line? 'I apologize for the inconvenience' was the reply.

Annoyed at this, I started looking around at other Broadband suppliers, as I was hard pressed to see Orange coming up with any solution. Then I came across a website called OrangeProblems, and I realised that what I was experiencing, both in terms of poor connection and support, seemed to be the norm for Orange. Countless posters on the forums had the same abysmal speeds that I was getting, and were getting the same run around as me from Technical Support.

So rather than waste any more of my time phoning India and getting the run around, I decided to move on. I phoned Orange to ask for my MAC code, and after being transferred to the 'convince them to stay' department, the guy tried to convince me that my connection problems were due to me using a dedicated Ethernet router, rather than the bog standard cheap USB Modem Orange supplies. Plug it back in and all my problems would be solved. I really couldn't be bothered to argue with him, so just insisted on him giving me my MAC code.

I have signed up with another provider, who informed within an hour when the connection would be active.

If you are thinking of signing up with Orange Broadband, don't bother. They make using the Internet a total pain in the arse.