Orange as an ISP

[Panta]

I have a mobile phone account with them, and they are offering a £10/month ISP wireless deal as a current phone customer.

Are they any good? Any views please? Sounds cheap but what arethe pitfalls? Reliability? After-service? that sort of thing. Any experiences please??
Ta.

Beep.

No experience with Orange, but I have been using Three (Hutinchson 3G) for over 6 months now and that seems fine. Drops the connection occasionally but reconnects again. Speed varies, seems actually to be better than the 512kbps I got via a BT line.

As you have a mobile phone from Orange, check the 3G signal strength in the location(s) you are likely to use the internet connection. The stronger the signal the better.

We used to be with Orange but the upload/download speeds were just awful and when we tried to leave them to go to another ISP they dragged their heels and gave us excuse after excuse why our line hadnt been freed up so we were without the internet for 2 months solid it was awful

Unless they have improved radically in the last 12 months I'd say steer well clear.

Orange left me without any broadband connection for 6 weeks in 2006 due to their lines failing - something to do with the lines they were renting off BT being inadequate for the upgraded speeds they were trying to use on them. That was bad enough, but for weeks they denied it was their problem and said it must be my equipment They finally admitted the fault was with the line, but I then experienced the problem with them dragging their heels while I tried to change ISP.

Their customer service was truly appalling throughout, and was carried out only via very expensive Helpline calls.

At the time I turned to this site in despair - just had a very quick look at it now and it still seems to be going strong...
orange problems.co.uk

I'm with orange as got free broadband with £15 pm contract mobile. We've had no problems at all but in all honesty don't download much. Seems really quick to me but was used to dial up . Can't comment on customer service as have had no contact with them since set up which was fairly easy.

Just to reiterate what vamanos says really.I had similer problems but they were Wanadoo back then. We didn't pay as they weren't providing us wth a servce, I left them and went with another ISP. At the time they agreed we owed them nothing. Now over 2 years later I have recieved a letter out of the blue threatening me with legal action for not paying (having heard nothing up to now I find this very odd).

Stay away from them!

We had similar problems to Vamonos - no internet access for about a month late in 2007 which was constantly blamed on factors beyong their control. After many many fruitless and frustrating phone calls to their customer services we left and switched to Sky. I would never go back to Orange and it pains me to say that Murdoch's outfit have been much better to deal with!

ooh....that's pretty clear then??

Thank you all for your pained advice. I DID think it was pretty cheap, and suspicions seem to be well founded!!

That link looks damning as well, Vamonos.

OH well, 'if it looks too good, then it probably is'......