Just took out £35 Orange mobile contract so considering moving from my
satisfactory £15 F2S service to the £5 Orange. Are the broadband and
livebox phone services reliable? I've had a look at thinkbroadband but most
folk only post when the service doesn't come up to scratch.

Hi,

I've been with Orange (previously Freeserve/Wanadoo until the buy out) for
about 2 years with a "Unlimited account" (Which in reality has a 40GB limit
as most other suppliers), the only problem was a service down for about a
month but this was down to BT who switched me off at the exchange then
denied all knowledge. As for the hardware the livebox was fine when
connected with cables but the supplied USB wireless adaptor kept burning out
(on different PCs) so I eventually bought a Belkin router which works
properly in all modes. I dont' use the phone service so I can't comment.

Hope this helps

Graham

"Duck" <paulbailienospam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:er197h$p48$1@news.freedom2surf.net...

paulbailienospam@hotmail.com declared for all the world to hear...
Declaration of interest, I work for Orange.

I put my brother on it around August last year and he's had no problems.
He even managed to install it himself which is quite amazing given his
knowledge of PCs.

As an Orange phone customer you will also have access to free tech
support from your mobile as well, should you ever need it.

Only downer from my point really is there is only 1 ethernet port on the
livebox, so if you need more than one ethernet you have to go buy a
switch for £20-£30.
--
Regards
Jon

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:30:38 -0000, "Duck"
<paulbailienospam@hotmail.com> wrote:

It works for me. The technical information offered on their website is
haphazard to say the least, and in at least one instance just plain
wrong, but the broadband access part of the service itself is fine.

As long as you know how to set up an ADSL router you can throw away
their CD and set it up yourself, though the box will be preconfigured
with a wireless security key chosen by them, so you might as well
leave it because it will presumably be different from everyone else's.

They will choose your login name and password for you, but this
doesn't matter if you use a different ISP for a POP mailbox, which I
do anyway. They don't seem to provide a usenet service, or at least I
couldn't find any reference to one, but I use APN so this doesn't
matter to me either. For basic broadband access it has worked well so
far, and like you I consider it better to pay £5 to Orange for an
8Mb/s service (in my case about 6) with a "fair use" limit of 30GB
than to pay £15-£20 to another ISP that was only giving me 2Mb/s with
a PAYG break point of 3GB.

The Orange Livebox may be locked to their service, but the service
certainly isn't locked to their box. As a consequence I suspect of
right hands not talking to left hands, my previous broadband service
stopped working before the Livebox was delivered, but I guessed what
had happened and just entered my Orange connection details into the
Draytek and it worked fine. (The Draytek didn't have a phone port so I
don't know if that would have worked too).

A word of advice. Check your bill online to see if you're really not
being charged for VOIP calls to Orange mobiles. I was told various
conflicting things about this (There's a bug, you have to register
first, it only applies to calls to Orange contract phones not PAYG,
etc), but it seems to be OK now.

Rod.

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:59:03 -0000, "Giganews"
<berniem69@NO_SPAM_yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Same here. The password checking on my Orange POP mailbox seems a bit
unreliable and often gives errors like this. I only check it in case
there are system messages, but use a POP mailbox belonging to another
ISP for actual email.

Rod.

"Roderick Stewart" <escapetime@removethisbit.beeb.net> wrote in message
news:r0dbt25indu0shkgug4tnpahe3h7hf12d9@4ax.com...
Thanks to all for replying, took the plunge and should be hooked up in about
10 days. Hopefully Rodericks granddaughter will be on standby .....

On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:26:53 -0000, "Duck"
<paulbailienospam@hotmail.com> wrote:

:-)
The security code they've programmed into the box is printed on a
label on the base of the box, and also on a sticky label on the
clingfilm they use to wrap the CD package. The one on the box itself
has larger lettering, but is of course not available at the remote
computer, and the label from the CD is almost unreadably small without
a magnifying glass, or an 8 year old with sharp eyes. If you haven't
got either of these, I'd suggest carefully copying the code from the
box onto a piece of paper in large letters. This might seem like a
trivial point, but there are a lot of characters in the code and you
only have to get one of them wrong and it won't connect. It would have
been so easy for them to have printed a bigger label...

Their techncal "help" seems to be concentrated in the wrong areas,
though it would cost nothing to put effort where it really matters, if
anybody put a bit of thought to it. Look on the website, or on their
CD (before you throw it away, which is my best advice about it), and
you'll see stupidly elaborate animations of plugs being pushed into
sockets, but nowhere will it clearly tell you which socket to use for
the phone line and which for the VOIP phone. It'll tell you to use the
red ethernet socket even though it doesn't matter which one you use,
and it'll tell you that you must have DHCP on or it won't connect to
the internet, which is nonsense. (DHCP is on by default, but you can
switch it off and have fixed local addresses if you want). You'll have
to click through page after page of HTML to read the complete story,
where a single PDF file you could download and print out would be much
simpler, but there doesn't seem to be one.

But throw away the CD, log into 192.168.1.1 as you would for a generic
router, just enter the name and password details you've been given,
and you'll have an excellent internet service.

Then print some sticky labels in English for the indicator lamps on
the box because the existing labelling is in the form of symbols in
WHITE print on a WHITE background, which makes me wonder what the
people who thought of this must have instead of brains.

Rod.

In article <jkgct2dci553utgs3lhh7i5npqrphjs7ck@4ax.com>,
Roderick Stewart <escapetime@removethisbit.beeb.net> wrote:
And remember it'#s in HEX (or mine was) so and "l" s or "0"s are ones or
zeros - not lower case "L"s or upper case "o"s.

--
Roger Hird
rl.hird@orpheusmail.co.uk
Website: http://roger.hird.orpheusweb.co.uk

"Roderick Stewart" <escapetime@removethisbit.beeb.net> wrote in message
news:esebt2het131ut1o2fgrb1slttr9jjeeu1@4ax.com...
Ditto ditto! Although curiously the problem hasn't been so bad over the last
couple of weeks.

V

I signed up for Orange max on 28th November, on the 31st January I was
still waiting for my Livebox. Orange CS credited me with three months
free service for the delay which, at the time, I was very grateful
for.

This was all until 1st Feb. I received an email stating my account had
been closed due to non-payment. I phoned CS who confirmed that it had
been closed, but couldn't provide me with a reason. After getting back
from work, I phoned CS again and asked the same question; yet again,
no one could tell me why the account had been closed, but they were
aware that broadband was being taken off my line and I would be able
to re apply for an account around the 12th Feb.

Speaking to a manager didn't seem to help either. She was unable to
reactivate my account because it was her "neck on the line, if her
superiors ever queried it", even though there were notes saying I'd
been credited with three months free service! I was told to write in
and explain the situation and CS would then, possibly, be able to do
something.

Two weeks later and two very disappointing replies to my letters (copy
and paste, anyone?) I'm now with BT Total Broadband. The homehub seems
to be a far superior piece of kit to the Livebox, I was sent a text
when my line was activated, given a delivery date for the equipment
and allowed to have it shipped to an alternative delivery address
(Orange wouldn't allow this because someone could have been using the
Livebox illegally at the alternative address...).

I'm not saying this will happen to a lot of people, perhaps I was just
unlucky.

In article <MPG.203f6adb7b7ab01698a75a@text.usenet.plus.net>,
Jon <spam@jonparker.plus.com> writes:
They're under £10 at a weekend computer fair.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

"Roger Hird" <rl.hird@orpheusmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4eb69f7163rl.hird@orpheusmail.co.uk...
Just a quick update, been on Orange for a couple of weeks, rock solid
connection, speeds at least as good as I was getting with F2S, and the phone
on Livebox works a treat. I'm well pleased, thanks for all your posts.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On 2ÔÂ15ÈÕ, ÏÂÎç5ʱ30·Ö, "Duck" <paulbailienos...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Good!
http://fy4.net/03.htm