Just moved from Eclipse, not because they weren't any good, but because I could get Orange a lot cheaper. Yes I was aware of this forum before I joined, but looking up stuff on Eclipse turns up a huge amount of negative as well. I had one or two minor issues in my 5 years with them but being a network professional I know enough that with infinite resources and the best will in the world, you'll never please everyone all the time. They served me well, but with the household budget under strain with the recent turmoil, Internet provision could be done cheaper so I started looking around. I've been an Orange mobile customer for many years (they are the only network that works reliably inside the house round here)so I know about their Indian Call Centres etc etc. Making inquires I got put through to their 'retension' department who offered me a deal even cheaper than the website on Home Max and my phone contract. I went for it. I got a nice shiny new mobile phone and a few days later the Live Box arrived just as my Eclipse connection went dead. There was a bit of a mix up with my authentication details and a misunderstanding with a bad Indian Accent which means I couldn't access my Orange email to get the details. When I signed up they asked me if I wanted the same password as my mobile phone and I said yes. It turns out they didn't use all of it and so what I had didn't work. I was beginning to think I'd made a monumental mistake when I rang again and got someone whose accent wasn't too thick and got what the password actually was. I put that in and the livebox sprang to life. WOW. Its seriously fast (Speednet gave me 6763 kb/sec) Its half as fast again as I was getting from Eclipse and a bit faster than the seriously expensive Zen Business ADSL we use at the school I work for.
Now, I know what I'm doing (I've lost count of the number of routers I've set up for people and didn't have any difficulty setting the livebox up with completely unsupported Linux) so this is just to say its not all negative. I suspect most of the issues are the same kind of stuff I deal with all the time, naive people with finger trouble and unrealistic expectations. They're computers people, they break down, they don't work like you want them too, get used to it. Orange are cheap, perhaps too cheap, maybe that is something to bear in mind when you hit problems. You can dress it up all you like but at the end of the day, you get what you pay for.
If you want good service and English call centres who know their system inside out and bend over backwards for you, go to Zen Internet, they really are fabulous, but don't expect it to get it for what Orange charge.
The end of the year, I'm still happy with Orange. Domestic issues with offspring abusing second line and running up bills. Had difficulty in grasping that calls to all mobiles aren't free on it....
Broadband still going like a train. Downloaded a linux distro yesterday - 680Mb in a little over 15 minutes. Hooked up the new Wii to the livebox no problem.
I've had to restart the livebox once when the second line stopped ringing in.
I've learnt a lot from reading stuff on here, there are 2 or 3 very knowledgeable people who frequent here. Borednow and Liquid to name two. Given me a lot of insight into the inner workings of ADSL and the phone system. I've chirped in once or twice with things I think I can help out with.
At the school I work for we brought in another ADSL line with o2 (now Sky) who offer ADSL2 on the exchange. Works well and we get around 13mb/s from it.
Orange are the only LLU on my home exchange so I won't trying to leave. Considering we're only a little place its surprising they bothered.
I'm still impressed with the deal Orange gave me to get me signed up, I wonder if they'll renew it when the 18 month is up ? (it amounts to Dolphin 25 for a lot less than the on-line price - providing I took Home Max, for the curious - my wife is making good use of it on her phone -she loans it to aforementioned offspring to phone and text her mates sometimes )
2 minor caveats, one of which I was aware of before I signed up. No Static IP address so I have to use DynDNS to access my home system and I have to route my domain email through Orange's server because they block port 25.
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