I got an email through yesterday about my line being upgraded for free to 8meg, with the date it should be carried out on. This hasn't been requested, and I presume is Orange upgrading everybody to 8meg in the area.
Our current contract with them runs until the end of Febuary, when we are planning to get our MAC code and move somewhere/anywhere else. Will this upgrade force us onto a new 12 month contract, or not? If it does can we stop the upgrade, and possibly get our MAC code now?
I emailed Orange about when we are getting upgraded to 8mb which was stated would happen automatically when our line could support it when we signed up with wanadoo. 9 months have now passed and Orange are saying they will only upgrade those who apply via the member bit on their site thus resulting in another 12 months. There is a mention if you look thru the help section of their site about cancelling upgrade requests.
Yeah you are right elhana (apologies if that is wrong but i can't go back and check lol) we should be upgraded, but Orange stated to me in an email that only customers who request an upgrade via the members site (thus requesting another 12 months) will be upgraded, so if you look at it, really only about 10 per cent of customers will ever be able to get the upto 8meg service, everyone else upto 2meg, i pointed this out to the ispa and had an email headed wanadoo requested information saying they have recieved the complaint and will investigate - yeah right! Point is loads of people have said this and they have had 9 months now, and from what i understand adsl max is no extra cost to Orange so why are they dragging their heels.
Well it does cost them, all regrades have an attached cost, it's just a lot of the time it's absorbed by the ISP as it's much less than a full line activation for example.
There are a few things to understand about Max, sure it did come in at the end of last March (think thats right, I forget now) and for a month or so there were some teething problems with migrations to it. AFAIK at the time serveral of Orange's systems didn't support ADSL Max not to mention there was no tech training on it then. It would have been a nightmare. Since all the systems have been upgraded and they started with ADSL Max in September as a trial to make sure those systems worked, October is when new lines were put onto Max straight away and November when the upgrade system opened in the member centre.
Upgrading all customers at once would have caused mayhem, anytime there's an upgrade, especially to a rate adaptive system there are problems which means more calls to support. Doing all at once would totally jammed the helplines and I'm sure there'd be a lot more complaints on here. Hence one of the previous ideas to upgrade all those on 2 meg over the course of 6 months from November. Problem is I don't know if that still applies or not, seems the message is a bit mixed so most are just picking the simplest answer to respond with when asked, to upgrade on the member centre rather than mention the previous policy that may have gone the way of the dinosaurs and so simply never happen.
Oh and BTW you've gotta remember LLU in the equation, which is still going on and really is a free upgrade onto the 8 meg system in comparison.
Well it does cost them, all regrades have an attached cost, it's just a lot of the time it's absorbed by the ISP as it's much less than a full line activation for example.
On this point I have to disagree.
Cost for ADSL (any speed) to ISP from BTW £100.80 per year. Cost for ADSLMax to ISP from BTW £100.80 per year. Cost of upgrade is free for any upgrade. Cost of providing new circuit £40. Cost of Disconnection is equivalent to one months rental (currently £8.40). The only cost to Orange is its internal administrative costs in putting through the requests. Far outweighed I would suggest if you consider the points below, especially point 5 which highlights a business opportunity to enhance their profits.
This raises some important points.
1. No difference in annual rental to ISP for 2meg or 8meg so why would any ISP want to drag their heels by not requesting upgrades and giving many disgruntled customers what they want and are entitled to.
2. No charge for upgrading existing circuits. See one above.
3. We now know why other ISPs can offer 1 month contracts. Because the most they can lose is nothing. In contrast Orange are requiring a new 12 month contract. Consider this. You decide to terminate 6 months into a 12 month contract at £19.99 per month. You owe them £119.94 to clear the contract. At the most they pay BTW £8.40 to terminate their contract and they are £111.54 in profit. Nice little earner for Orange. Perhaps they want to get everyone on 12 month contracts, hack them of with their appalling customer service in the hope that customers terminate earlier as they see a better profit in this approach (just me being cynical).
4. In May this year BTW are further reducing IPStream products. The current charges to ISP's will be reduced from £100.80 to £91.56 per year and connection charges will fall from the current £40 to £34.86 Is it likely that we the customers will see any financial benefit or improvement in customer service from this. Doubtful!!
5. Given everything that is mentioned in points 1 to 4 above it just does not make sense why Orange do not go ahead and upgrade free of charge without obligation to a new contract as they previously agreed under Wanadoo. The other point is that the cost to them from BTW in providing the Starter and Unlimited packages is the same. In business terms it therefore makes sense to get as any people on Unlimited as the bottom line profit margin is much greater.
6. Give the points made in 5 above we are talking Orange here so perhaps sense is not an issue!!!!!!
On this point I have to disagree.
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Cost of upgrade is free for any upgrade.
Ah right, I'd always assumed there was a cost for changing between different wholesale products. Never really looked that hard into the cost side of things that much.
Quote:
3. We now know why other ISPs can offer 1 month contracts. Because the most they can lose is nothing. In contrast Orange are requiring a new 12 month contract.
There is the initial connection charge and equipment cost that Orange do absorb. Anyway at the end of the day it's the customer's choice to enter into the contract.
As for the the new contract, I agree that it shouldn't be needed but right now thats how Orange have decided to do it.
Quote:
5. ... The other point is that the cost to them from BTW in providing the Starter and Unlimited packages is the same. In business terms it therefore makes sense to get as any people on Unlimited as the bottom line profit margin is much greater.
That may not be quite as you believe when you factor in how people use the different packages and the data charges. Assuming it's 50p per gig, half that which I've seen for another ISP, then for the extra £5 difference between packages it equates to an extra 10gig of data, add that onto the 2 gig allowance for Starter and it's a lot less than the currently imposed limit of 50gig on Unlimited. If everyone on the package used upto 50gig then I'm sure Orange would lose a bucket load of cash and need to drastically change their usage limit or hitch prices a lot.
Just take a look at the heavy user migrations, they migrate ISP on mass looking for the best deal, often the majority going for one or two ISP's. When the sudden jump in bandwidth charges hit the ISP in question and they raise prices or introduce countermeasures the heavy users move to another ISP and it starts over. Although the lower packages don't bring in the most revenue the income from them is probably a lot more stable and controllable for ISP's.
Joined: 13 Aug 2006Posts: 1689Location: Marylebone Central London
I agree totally with Elhana the ISP im with has a cap of 30g if you go over that its a £1 a gig extra which prevents people going over it because they know it will cost them which is fair enuff and offer a 1 month contract so if you dont like their service your free to leave , its another story when the likes of Orange advertise "unlimited" when it clearly isnt just to get people to sign up and locked into a 12 month contract only to terminate their contract when they take "unlimited" as just that and charge them the rest of the 12 months of that contract surely it would be better to advertise 50g cap and not as "unlimited" but then they wont as they wont get so many sign ups it really is a right con especially for newbies joining broadband they know no better and just trust the ISP like i did,well after the compulsary free MAC codes from february i hope Ofcom go further and stop these large companies taking people for a ride.
_________________ ex Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange Blog
That may not be quite as you believe when you factor in how people use the different packages and the data charges. Assuming it's 50p per gig, half that which I've seen for another ISP, then for the extra £5 difference between packages it equates to an extra 10gig of data, add that onto the 2 gig allowance for Starter and it's a lot less than the currently imposed limit of 50gig on Unlimited. If everyone on the package used upto 50gig then I'm sure Orange would lose a bucket load of cash and need to drastically change their usage limit or hitch prices a lot.
Depends what package the ISP has with BTW. Could be Capacity based or Usage based. Capacity = fixed charge for access equipment (ie IPStream) + fixed charge for BT Central. Usage based = fixed charge for access equipment (IPStream) + fixed charge for BT Central plus + Kbps per end user throughput. Usage has lower fixed charge for BT Central equipment as you would expect. All changing in May but that another story.
If an ISP is running capped service then it would make sense to go for Usage Based Charging. If they are running an Unlimited service then Capacity Based Charging would be the way forward, thats supposing with the latter option they rent sufficient capacity to meet customer demands otherwise they may end up with contention issues.
Orange do not appear to have a robust usage policy at moment in terms of their Unlimited package. If they choose to offer a questionable unlimited service and then choose the wrong rental package form BT (IE Usage Based) then this is either a lack of business foresight or greed. Anyway, I beleive this is being challenged on a number of fronts. I think the juries still out on this one and we will have to wait and see how the ASA adjudicate on this issue.
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