Topic: Orange

After O2 has announced it's planning an IPTV service rival Orange has now said that it's service will not arrive as planned.

The Orange service was planned to appear sometime in 2007, but now Orange have admitted it will be available sometime in 2008, and it could still be six to twelve months away. One reason touted it that as the market is still in it's infancy there hasn't been a major take-up among consumers, this means that the project isn't at the top of Orange's 'to do' list.

ISP Review has revealed that Orange has decided to remove all it's users on unmetered dial-up and 'force' them onto broadband.

The ISP has stated in a letter to it's existing AnyTime customers that the service will close in December this year. It looks like a good deal for those customers as they are being offered a Broadband Starter package which will give a speed of 2Mbps for the low price of £11.99 a month, which is £3 less than the dialup package.

The problem is that Orange have not give users much warning, they only have 14 days to decide if they want to move or not and any who are still not sure will be automatically moved to the broadband connection. Users are not happy with the 'bully boy' tactics which are similar to it's removal of users and emails on it's PAYG dial-up connections.

It's not known how many customers this will affect, but we can't see why anyone would still be paying £15 for a dial-up connection if they could get broadband. For those who are unable to get broadband then this is bad news and could be the start of the end of unmetered dial-up connections.

PC Word and Orange haven't given up trying to tempt customers with laptop deals, even though their last effort made the headlines for the wrong reasons.

As from the end of August all new Orange broadband customers can get £280 of a range of selected computers, but will still mean that they will have to shell out £409 for the cheapest laptop model, and £479 for the cheapest desktop.

While the deal isn't half as good as the previous deal of a free laptop or a saving £350 on any PC World laptop the minimum contract length have been reduced from two years to 18 months and Norton 360 security software is also included.

A PC World spokesman insisted that the free laptop offer wasn't an expensive mistake and there was a possibility the promotion will be repeated at a later date....yeah right!

If you have an old Freeserve and Wanadoo pay-as-you-go dial-up account then it maybe wise to start using it if you want to keep it.

Orange, the latest incarnation of Freeserve Wanadoo etc, have decided to remove inactive accounts without giving users any notice. It's usual for ISPs to suspend inactive accounts and this was the case if users didn't dial-up to Orange within 90 days. The problem was easily solved by a visit to the website and reactivating the account, Orange decided to increase the period to 260 days earlier this year, but neglected to tell anyone that once your account was deactivated then there was no way to reactivating it again.

One problem is that a the 'grace period' is no longer in use so not only will the dial-up account be removed, but customers will have any emails stored on Orange's servers permanently deleted.

Orange, who hasn't the greatest of reputations for customer service is spending £100m on investment to revive it's poor performance.

The company is in the process of integrating its broadband and mobile customer service functions following the re-branding of the Wanadoo business under the Orange banner and the introduction of free broadband for high-spending mobile phone subscribers.
This has proved troublesome with even a customer services executive at Orange calling their current system "not fit for purpose" and claiming that the company "still has an awful lot of work to do".

They have added a voice-recognition system so that customers calling in can identify a specific issue, rather than selecting from a series of options that may not address their problem. They have also employed an extra 1,000 customer service agents over the past year and look to add more to it's 6,700 customer services staff over the coming year.

So things may be looking brighter if you want to try to contact Orange support.

It seemed a 'too good to be true' offer.....and it was, PC World/Orange have withdrawn their 'free' laptop offer.

Less than a month after it's launch when they claimed that they had "tens of thousands" of notebooks to be given away, it seems they have been a victim of their own success. The PC World webpage has the notice "We're Sorry. This deal has now ended. You can still take advantage of our great laptop deals at PC World..."

So was this just a clever marketing ploy? We'll let you decide...

PC World customers can get Orange broadband for £7.49 for the first three months with comes with a 'free' laptop.

After the first three months the price rises to £14.99 for a 2Mbps connection, but there is a chance to upgrade to 8Mbps for £19.99 a month.
The laptop is a Advent 7211 model which comes loaded with a 15.4in widescreen display, Intel Celeron processor, 256MB memory, 40GB hard drive and a DVD rewriter.

The 'free' laptop is only available when customers pay £69.99, which makes us wonder how they can use the word 'free', oh and you will also need to sign up to a 24 month contract.

Over the years there have been quite a few 'free PC' deals which come and then go, and this seems to be one of them. Customers need to sign up at one of the 150 PC World stores.

For most broadband users there is some peace of mind knowing that they are covered, although voluntarily, by a code of practice from the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA).

But according to findings by The Register, customers who are supplied broadband by Orange are not covered by the code, which covers issues like data protection, honesty, and complaints procedures.

The confusion is that Orange are not an ISP in the traditional sense, and as their broadband product is part of a broadband/mobile bundle the broadband is a "free" addition to the mobile package and so not covered.
Orange are a member of the ISPA which throws things into even more confusion, customers are not covered even though their ISP is a member of the Association.

For the customer this is just another reason to be wary of so called 'free' broadband packages which seem to be giving the industry a bad name lately.
The 'Orange problem' is also shared by customers of TalkTalk, although Virgin Media, have said all its broadband customers are covered by the ISPA code of practice, regardless of what other services they take.

Orange will start to charge customers requesting a MAC code to migrate to another ISP in December this year.

They will be passing on the £12 fee that they are charged by BT to supply the code, which traditionally ISP's absorb within their pricing, but Orange will allow the initial MAC code to be released without charge, with only re-requests triggering the charge.

While a code will last for 30 days after BT issue it, may customers find that by the time they submit it to an ISP, or if they experience problems then they will find that the code has expired

It seems that other ISP's have no plans to start charging customers, but figures of a extra £3m a year in revenue to Orange have been mentioned, so other providers may see this as a money making venture.

It's worth noting that BT will be introducing a charge of  £33.75 for ISPs that fail to release a MAC code to their customers, which will start in the spring of next year.

Its been a while now since Orange announced it's free broadband, but finally they have updated their packages and updated their website.

Orange have decided to offer both broadband & mobile contacts and broadband only, both are subject to contract periods, 12 months with Just Broadband and 18 with the Mobile & Broadband which isn't too different to most mobile only contracts.

It's nice to see that Orange are upfront about a FUP on it's unlimited  packages, something which other ISPs could learn from.

And thanks goes to ADSLGuide for compiling the info into an handy table.