Orange broadband: sweet or sour?

In the past, Orange Broadband has been a victim of what we like to call TalkTalk syndrome (that is: taking on too many customers, too quickly and falling apart as a result).

However, during the last year Orange broadband have started to turn their service around: their deals are cheaper and the once dire customer service seems to be improving too.

But have they done enough? Will Orange Broadband prove sweeter than an, um, orange? Or will it leave you feeling like you're sucking on a lemon?

Our full review aims to find out.

What's changed?

Broadband provider's with bad reputations are always keen to tell us that they're on the road to recovery but, in Orange's case, there's some solid evidence to back that up.

The broadband provider's LLU network, known for being unreliable and prone to faults, has now been switched over to the BT Wholesale network - the deal was signed in April 2010 and the exchange switch was completed in November 2011.

As a result, network problems have fallen significantly.

There's plenty of that 'road to recovery' atonement going on too, though: see the customer service section of the article for more detail on that.

Orange's deals and prices

Following a recent revamp, Orange have three pretty simple broadband deals, each with up to 20Mb speeds and completely unlimited downloads:

• Simply broadband: no line rental
• Broadband and off-peak calls: Orange line rental
• Broadband and anytime calls: Orange line rental

There's a discount for those taking Orange line rental so the deal with evening and weekend calls is the cheapest.

At £12.75 Orange line rental is cheaper than BT, if more pricey than many other providers (see our line rental guide for more information on that).

All customers get a free wireless router and, overall, Orange broadband deals are among the UK's cheapest.

Get it for less

The deals are particularly good value for those with Orange mobile phones.

Orange are finally trying to entice their mobile customers to broadband with a £5 monthly discount for new or existing Orange mobile customers with pay monthly contracts.

That makes the cheapest Orange broadband deal just £5.

Cinema fans will be pleased to know that all Orange Broadband customers are eligible for 2-for-1 cinema tickets every Wednesday, which gives you an opportunity to see their 'don't let a mobile ruin your movie' cinema ads.

Unlimited connections

It's rare to find unlimited broadband so cheap and part of the reason (Orange's large-heartedness apart, of course) used to be a certain looseness with the word 'unlimited'.

For years, Orange have had a reputation for having one of most restrictive fair use policies in the broadband market, severely slowing users with little explanation.

Recently, though, Orange did a 180: now, they say, their broadband is completely unlimited, not a fair use policy in sight.

It's early days yet but we'd say that getting rid of fair use altogether is a positive step in the right direction.

Note, however, that Orange do manage traffic on their network.

During peak times (6pm to 11:30pm on weekdays and 5pm to 11:30pm on weekends) newsgroups and P2P will be slowed while VoIP and gaming will be prioritised over other applications.

Sounds fair to us.

Customer service

Like their download allowances, Orange broadband's customer service has been infamous down the years for never quite delivering on its promises.

But in the past few months that seems to have changed: the last large YouGov survey placed Orange top for customer service and so did Ofcom's last big survey of broadband satisfaction.

And the fact that the head of broadband apologised for the poor service customers received in the past is, we think, definitely a plus.

"Our objective is to get to a point where we are no longer ashamed of what we are doing to our customers - or, to put it positively, where we are proud of what we are doing to our customers," Orange said.

That sounds pretty good to us, too.

So: is Orange Broadband any good?

If you are looking for a cheap broadband package with value and loads of features bundled in then consider going with Orange Broadband.

If on the other hand you are a sucker for top-notch customer service and fast, consistent speeds then go for a better quality broadband provider like O2 Broadband or Plusnet.

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