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.

The outage that affected Orange customers at the start of the week seems to have been resolved.

Up to 60,000 Orange LLU punters were cut off on Monday by what is rumoured to be an "unauthorised" change to the network by an engineer working for  Alcatel who manage the Orange LLU infrastructure.

Orange customers are feeling a bit red as many have been left without broadband access.

The problem appears to be restricted to its LLU connected users with reports of up to 60,000 being unable to connect, with problems starting yesterday afternoon.

The Orange status page claims full availability for all broadband, dial-up, email, forums and web hosting services, but a statement from the company admits to having problems.

As we rumoured yesterday, Orange mobile customers are being offered 'free' broadband following the rebranding of Wanadoo as Orange.

Orange have said that customers, new and existing, who sign up to an 18 month mobile contract over £30 will be eligible for the 'free' broadband package. This will include a wireless modem and a VoIP service called Wireless & Talk which will allow free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines, users can also register for free calls to Orange mobiles.
For an extra £6 per month, customers can sign up to the new Orange Anytime package which gives them free calls to UK landlines at any time.

Customers who are hesitant of signing for a lengthy agreement can take advantage of a "TRY initiative", which will offer 1Mbps broadband for 30 days without having to commit to a minimum term contract.

So is the future Bright or just Orange for Wanadoo?

Wanadoo are to rebrand under to Orange label this summer, to create a common image with it's sister company.
Nothing is set to change to users, all mail addresses and services will remain unchanged, much the same as when it last rebranded from Freeserve back in 2004.

A FAQ for those interested is on the Wanadoo site.

Wanadoo revise its packages Wanadoo have updated their website with details of their Starter, Plus and Max products.

The most noticeable amendment is the removal of the old 30GB usage cap - dropped in favour of an unlimited one - but where a Fair Use Policy is in force. Basically this means that subscribers need to use their service "fairly" and consistently downloading maybe 10GB of data every day (its possible to download an astonishing 85GB per day on an 8Mbps service), may see users facing the wrath of the ISP.

Last week saw Wanadoo rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading advertising over the ISPs 8Mbps services - mainly citing that availability was limited to under 5% of the UK's population could actually be in a position to get 8Mbps from Wanadoo.

Wanadoo UK is facing a the wrath  of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the advertising watchdog claims The Register.

The problem is with the advertising of the newly launched 8Mbps broadband service, but details of complaints are not yet known, but seem to be about claims by Wanadoo of it's speed, and availability as it's only available in limited areas of the country.
The ASA  has received more than half a dozen complaints from the general public, including some from BT, Bulldog and Tiscali who, as you would expect, were quick to criticize.

A spokesman for Wanadoo UK confirmed that the ASA "is currently investigating our up to 8 meg TV and press advertising" and that it would "comply with any recommendations" made by the ASA.

The ruling , which is expected to uphold four out of five complaints, should be published within the next week or so.

A recent ad by Wanadoo blaming BT for its upgrade fee has drawn the ire of the telco - and a reprimand from the advertising watchdog.

The marketing material in question - a print advertising campaign - carried the text:

The ad was 'signed' "your friends at Wanadoo".

BT complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that the ad was "misleading and denigratory", as the telco charges between £5 and £11 to its competitors, whereas the ad may cause people to think the whole £20 charge was down to BT.

Wanadoo is charged £11 plus VAT by BT for the upgrade but said some of remaining £6.02 was passed onto the customers for Wanadoo's costs in administering the charge. Wanadoo also said the ad showed that BT charged an amount of money but didn't state BT was responsible for the whole thing.

The ASA disagreed, saying customers would be misled into believing the whole charge was due to BT and told Wanadoo not to repeat the claim.

Wanadoo have now officially joined the ranks of LLU providers after switching on 15 exchanges in Leeds yesterday.

This is the first round of exchanges that it will be installing it's kit into, a further 135 exchanges in Birmingham, Bristol, London and Manchester are in the pipeline.
Wanadoo customers in Leeds will be migrated over to the LLU service during the next couple of weeks.

For those who have trouble with their PC's or configuring their broadband connection help is at hand.

Wanadoo is offering what they call 'a man in a van' to help its customers set up their computers. Support will be via supplier Microtechs and will help users to set up printer and file sharing, connecting additional PCs, and removing spyware from customers' machines.

It all sounds nice, but with alll things there is no such thing as a 'free lunch' and at £69.99 to set up the Livebox, connect it to up to two PCs, set up Wireless and Talk, set up security and show you how to access the internet, it isn't. If you fancy the DIY solution then they can offer 60 minutes of telephone support for, wait for it, £15.99!

Or you could post in the bug forums which are cheaper ;)

Wanadoo have announced what it calls a  "new era of broadband services for customers", although they will have to live in one of it's LLU areas.

It is offering them:-

• Up to 8 Mbps broadband as standard for just £14.99 (for the first 3 months)
• Free speed upgrade up to 8 Mbps for all existing customers when area unbundled
• Local Loop Unbundling roll-out timetable unveiled
• Up to 24 Mbps services coming soon

From November new customers will be able to receive an up to 8 Mbps wireless broadband connection, plus free off-peak VoIP calls for six months - for £14.99 per month for the first three months and then £17.99 thereafter. In non-LLU areas customers will be offered the same package but with an up to 2 Mbps connection and the promise of a free upgrade when a faster up to 8 Mbps speed becomes available from Wanadoo.

Broadband provider Wanadoo has cut the price of its 2Mbps service to £14.99 for the first six months of a new contract. Also included, is Wanadoo's broadband telephony service (VoIP), going by the name of Wireless & Talk. Under promotion, the service is free for the first six months and Wanadoo are thoughtful enough to even provide a free wireless 'livebox'.

Wireless & Talk doesn't require any software downloads or extra equipment, subscribers simply plug a normal (touch tone) phone into the Wanadoo Livebox and make calls as normal.

After six months the price reverts to its normal £17.99 a month.

Wanadoo is planning to have at least half of its customers using it's own LLU network, rather than connecting via BT.

It is investing €1bn in the project, although this is across several of its European operations rather than just in the UK. They hope to have between 50 and 65% cent of its 2.2 million UK customers using unbundled loops within the next two to three years, but admit that it will not be able to migrate all it's users to it's own network "It's not going to cover all the UK - that's just not possible. That's the job of BT." they commented.

LLU seems to be 'coming of age' recently as more large ISP's depart down the unbundled route.

Wanadoo have this week announced a new deal where mobile phone customers of its sibling company Orange, can pick up a 2Mbps service for just £9.99 per month.

Wanadoo's 'Wireless & Talk' service provides users with the ISPs Livebox, enabling wireless broadband around the home coupled with VOIP calling, in addition to the 2Mbps ADSL service. VOIP calls on the service are limited to a maximum length of 2 hours, but there's nothing preventing you from simply redialing the number again.

The move is hardly a surprising one, given both companies are owned by France Telecom, and clearly is a move designed not only to tempt new broadband customers, but an effort to retain its existing mobile phone customer base as well.

Existing Orange customers can sign up for the broadband offer by dialling 424 from their mobile phone.

Wanadoo are going to secretly change 500 of its subscribers to its forthcoming LLU'ed network.

According to the Register, Wanadoo will not be telling the subscribers being forced into the trial due to the recent history of poor service from the likes of Bulldog - a major LLU operator, plagued with problems.

The only clue that subscribers have been moved over is downtime of upto 30 minutes, estimated to occur in the next 4 weeks. Officially the downtime will be a result of "essential upgrades".

If there was such a thing, then surely this would be a prime contender for the "Worst Secret in the World" award.

It was Freeserve, then a year ago it was Wanadoo, now it's Orange!

As part of it's simplification efforts Wanadoo's owners France Telecom have decided to bring it under the Orange banner. It is hoped customers will be able to merge payment service so that mobile, broadband, video-on-demand and fixed line services will be the same company and charged on the same bill.

As the Wanadoo logos, letters, bills etc will be changing it must be good news for the printers, who no doubt hope Orange will be changing again next year!

Advertising broadband can be a touchy business, first Telewest are rapped by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), and now Wanadoo have been on the receiving end of their wrath!

The advert shown to UK TV shows a group of teenagers messing about in a scrap yard, with two of then doing what teenagers do in a car....
Sixty two viewers complained that their kiss was "too explicit" for a prime time commercial advert, and it was "irresponsible to show a car scrapyard as an adventurous place to hang out with friends".

M&C Saatchi, the agency employed by Wanadoo, defended the ad saying it was not "coarse or unduly sexual" and the scrapyard "stylised American setting" with the "'pop-video' type location intended to be fantastical".

The ASA on the other hand thought not, so have banned the ad.

Wanadoo has today announced their "Wireless & Talk" VoIP offering.

"W&T" is basically a telephone service using an existing Wanadoo broadband service providing free phone calls to all UK Landlines in the evenings and weekends. Calls at other times will cost 2.5p per minute.

The service will add an additional £4 per month on top of the broadband subscription.

More info can be found here.

Comparatively 'small fry' compared to the likes of the BT Groups ISPs who today announced a combined 1.28 million subscribers, but Wanadoo will reportedly hit its 500,000th ADSL subscriber tomorrow.

Formally Freeserve, the French owned ISPs' broadband options has seen an increasing number of aggressive price reductions over the past few months, which inevitably has helped boost their subscriber figures. Not bad for an ISP who's subscriber base was at little over 68,000 a year ago - an increase of 8 fold.

Wanadoo Netherlands, a sister company of Wanadoo UK, has decided to build its own ADSL network, insisting that the local network operator charges for data transmission are simply too high. Wanadoo join the ranks of another Netherlands based ISP with a UK presence, Tiscali - who also recently decided to dump KPN and build its own network.

Wanadoo NL with over 400,000 broadband subscribers, initially hopes to be rolling out in western Netherlands, with an ultimate aim to have their new network available to around 55% of all Dutch households. Construction of the network starts in earnest in 2005.

Wanadoo have announced the cheapest 1Mbps connection yet, priced at only £17.99 per month.

As with many of the cheaper ADSL offerings the data transfer is restricted, you get 2GB of downstream traffic per month which is enough for most casual users so long as you do not start downloading quantities of large files. The price increases to £22.99 for a 6GB limit and £27.99 for 30GB.

Users exceeding this limit will be warned with two e-mails and asked to chose either to upgrade to a £23.99 monthly package which allows 6GB of downloads, or face having their service restricted to e-mail-only for the rest of the month. Although Wanadoo have said that the usage limits will not come into force until next year.

Time will tell if other ISP's respond to this, but be prepared for more 1Mbps offers appearing soon!!

ISP Wanadoo has gotten itself into some hot water with the Advertising Standards Authority again over a recent run of press advertisements.

Receiving complaints from both BT and Telewest, the ASA read that a recent advertisement by Wanadoo made claims of "Full speed broadband for just £17.99 a month" in respect of the ISPs 512k offerings. Both BT and Telewest didn't like the fact that Wanadoo referred to 512k as being "Full Speed", given that faster services were readily available. The ASA decided to look into this a bit closer. Cue Wanadoo's spin doctors.

Wanadoo state that it is widely accepted that broadband refers to a service that is of at least 512kbps downstream rate (the ASA have previously agreed on this point), and that by calling their service "full speed", what Wanadoo were actually doing was to try and help the consumer understand exactly what 'broadband' is, given the confusion created by other ISPs offering services with less than 512kbps downstream rates.

Nonetheless, the Advertising Standards Authority didn't like this noble attempt, and felt that 'full speed' to consumers would imply the fastest broadband service available given technical constraints, and would serve only to mislead customers. Wanadoo must now remove the claim from future advertisements.

The full adjudication can be found on the ASA web site.

Wanadoo will launch, an all-in-one wireless router with built in firewall and anti-virus protection.
The 'Livebox' as it will be called will be available for £79.99 and will allow wireless connections to PC's up to a claimed range of 30 metres, but they don't specify if this will be based on the existing 802.11 standards.

Plans are also afoot to upgrade the Livebox to allow VoIP, on-line gaming and even 'TV on demand', which could make it a handy little box.
CEO Eric Abenur is very positive about it.

There is one 'small' catch....it can only be used if you are a Wanadoo broadband customer. Our enthusiasm has now left the building!

Wanadoo have fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over the paid ads on it's search engine.

The problem is that punters searching on the Wanadoo home page not only come up with 'legitimate' search results , but also paid advertisements which are hard to distinguish. The paid ads display a light-grey hyperlink against a white background to explain that search results are ranked according to the highest bidder instead of by relevance.

Making matters worse is the fact that the ads are ranked above genuine results. An example is that when searching for 'euro 2004' the top 12 results are all paid advertisers, the top being ebay, which doesn't have much relevance to the soccer tournament!

The ASA want Wanadoo to make a clearer distinction between those hits which are paid for and those which are not.

Wanadoo have been busy today!!

After announcing the widely leaked new ADSL services, Eric Adensur, CEO of the newly named Wanadoo, unveiled plans to offer TV services and VoIP over broadband.

Although these services are nothing new, they are novel in the fact that users won't need a computer to access them. Mr Adensur said that they hope to launch a "home gateway" box which would connect to game consoles, TV sets and other electronic equipment, which in turn would be connected to the ADSL line.
Also users would be able to plug in existing phones into the box to take advantage of VoIP phone calls, which are much cheaper than BT's standard rates.

The new TV service service is planned to start in the summer, with the VoIP following in the winter, although he admitted that they haven't been engaged in serious discussions with film and content providers as yet.

Wanadoo, the new name for Freeserve launches tomorrow, and it has kicked off with two new services to mark the occasion.

As previously rumoured it will unveil both a 512Kbps and 1Mbps connection. The former will be priced at £17.99 per month, and as it seems the norm at the moment will be capped, this time at 2Gb a month. The faster connection will be priced at £34.99, but both will include free connection and a free modem.

Also on offer to new users are free music downloads via the Wanadoo Music Club which is usually £9.99, this includes 1000 streamed tracks and 14 downloads. Available to all users will be free McAfee Security software and virus and spam filtering, which is becoming common for ISP's to offer broadband users.

CEO Eric Abensur also hinted at possible changes in the way they obtain their broadband connections.

Thinking of getting broadband, and fancy a free connection for a whole year ? Existing Freeserve AnyTime or No Ties subscribers can do just that !

Following the announcement earlier this month that Freeserve is to rebrand into its parent company, Wandadoo, the Freeserve website is offering existing members the chance to win a years 512Kbsec broadband connection. The ISP has 5 such packages to give away.

Those already with a Freeserve broadband account (or those who signup in the near future) will not entirely be left out in the cold, with Wanadoo offering free music downloads and free music videos to watch online to the new and old subscribers.

More info on the competition can be found here .