Orange mobile data chucks punters Orange UK users are reporting that the mobile data service is dropping connections and refusing to let some customers onto the internet at all. The problems started yesterday afternoon, with users unable to connect over 2G or 3G networks. Last night it looked as though the operator had managed to slap a fix together, but this …
My first thought was "how can anyone tell?"
Orange's data infrastructure appears to be based on two old baked bean cans and a length of string. This would explain their laughable monthy usage caps and the terrible general performance.
Their sms service is often almost as bad, with message travel time only slightly better than first class post.
Mines the one with my PAC and the 3 leaflets in the pcoket.....
When I was doing my dissertation, one aspect of it was fishing mms's out of a mailbox (mms to email is part of the spec) to grab the pictures. Normally they arrived in a couple of minutes. Every so often you wouldn't see an image for 72 hours. Which is great when you have about 15 minutes to demonstrate what you've been up to for the last 6 months.
"Mines the one with my PAC and the 3 leaflets in the pcoket....."
Too right. My PAC arrived the other day, and I've already set up a new contract with a new provider. (Who will inevitably turn out to be just as bad!) When cancelling and requesting the PAC, I told the customer service guy exactly why I was buggering off for mobile pastures new - citing the poor signal (in places I once had a great signal) as one of the reasons.
I got a SIM only deal with orange about 8 weeks ago. Based in Nottingham city centre and had very little data access despite having 4 or 5 bars with 3G coverage. Luckily I was on a 30 day contract and so binned them off and moved to another network. But other users I know who are still on Orange are still having the same problem (although not quite so bad now).
Phoned Orange customer service and their advice was "if you want to use data on your phone, turn off 3G on your handset". This advice was shortly preceeded by "Orange has the best 3G coverage".
It appears that Orange may have the best 3G _coverage_ (ie you can get a signal), but they don't have the best 3G _capacity_ (ie being able to actually send/receive data).
I've been having general problems with Orange for a while, but the last two days have been awful. For some reason 2G and EDGE (or whatever it is I'm using when the 3G+ symbol appears) are working fine, but plain 3G is not.
Is there an Orange Forum somewhere for discussing this kind of thing?
I live in Sunderland and have been unable to use any data services on my mobile since last night.
I phoned Orange earlier and was told that it was affecting 90% of users and that their engineers were working on it as a priority. I was given an ETA of 13:00 - well, it's currently 12:58 and I still have no net connection...
Out since yesterday here in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Thanks el reg for being of more use than Orange in keeping me informed of problems on their network...
Nothing on their website that I can find about network problems... glad I've got less than 6 months before I can escape.
no access in Northamptonshire area since sometime this morning.
Blamed my brother in law for breaking it as first noticed it while he was playing with my phone. Think I will carry on letting him think I blame him though, just for a little bit longer...
Badgers in the works could be the cause.
Joining the predictable chorus of "I hadn't noticed". I find data coverage dodgy as hell at home or work (wifi at home helps, mind). Travelling across London, it's usually really spotty too. I just assumed that I happened to try to get connectivity in blackspots.
As to the quite reasonable question of why, if it's so bad, I don't change network- it doesn't help. Friends on other networks suffer just as many problems, 3G coverage is still not much cop, even in big cities.
Also, there seems to be a lack of cheap plans out there for people who don't need many minutes, but would like some data and a moderate chunk of texts (or unlimited text). I feel pretty ill-served as a spoddy smartphone user who prefers texts and emails to bellowing their banal business in crowded trains, and who also wants the sci-fi frisson of pulling up satellite imagery to help find your way around your immediate area (which is very video game, and still amuses).
That was a bit longer than I was expecting (argh, that needs a Paris icon, surely).
That's the closest yet to what I want. Still paying too much for stuff I don't need, but pretty good.
I'd rather get 100 mins and 500MB of data and pay a tenner or such. Most months, I hardly make any voice calls. Texts.. hrm, I probably am unlikely to get through more than a couple of hundred in a month. At the moment, I am keeping my data use in check to avoid spending a lot outside of allowances, but would cheerfully use more if I had it (google maps and the like).
I think the objection is the balance, they assume that everyone wants to make loads of calls- I feel a little odd holding what I think of as a PDA to my ear and talking into it.
Anyway, food for thought, thanks. Which network is underneath Virgin?
I don't think it is a complete failure, as someone else has hinted at, the consumer broadband section is up.
I was browsing the net via HSDPA Orange Dongle on my laptop whilst phoning Ornage to complain.
Now trying to see if I can get the consumerbroadband APN to work on my phone :/
Fed up with Orange and their failings recently...
I got stranded last night trying to find a restaurant- jumped off the tube, fired up google maps to tell me which way to walk (I can't find my own way down a one-way street) and... nothing! Caused me no end of bother and meant I turned up late and missed half the free bar time at the event.
Like many other commentards, I had assumed it was down to some dodgy app I'd installed and was planning a factory reset tonight on my Desire. Many thanks to el Reg for saving me the hassle. I'd ring up Orange and complain if I thought it was worth the effort. Other than maps I try not to rely on mobile data since it's always a bit shit.
Very little beer for me...
Orange should be ashamed, this outage or the potential of a possilbe outage should have been notified to all customers before any work commenced on the intergration with t-mobile and if this is nothing to do with that work, then the decent thing would have been to send its customers a text or even post some kind of notification on it's website of the issues and the possible time scales for them to be resolved. Instead they clunk up there telephone lines with angry customers who have been trying to connect to the data services since yesterday, when the service first went down and wasting everyone's time... i don't know about others, but i initially assumed that I had broken my phone somehow... it would have been nice to have known there were problems. Disgraceful..!!!
Same here - in London there are several holes in the coverage, including where I work (around Oxford Circus) which is annoying.
Additionally even if you get full bars on the phone, it's a 50-50 chance whether you'll be able to use it or not.
I called help desk, got send a SIM updated with a new connection point in it, but no change.
I'm using my phone mostly on WiFi, and moving off Orange as soon as my contract ends.
I just signed up for an Orange contract, with 500Mb per month data, but wasn't so foolish as to get one that costs money. I went through one of the CPW online subsidiaries who were offering 23 months free on a 24 month contract, and I got the equivalent of another two months refunded through TopCashBack (totally free service- http://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/LongPockets - just got 60 quid back on my car insurance too). So they are paying me. And I got a free Samsung Tocco Lite of course- got to have a touch screen to surf.
Yes, there is a catch. You have to remember to put in for the money. If you are lazy, forgetful or disorganized you might end up paying after all.
Orange custard services said that it went down on Wednesday but was back up later in the day and went down again at about 8am on Thursday.
Seemed to come back up again Thursday afternoon.
It seemed to be down this morning for a short while (Bristol area) but came back up at about 9:15.
I think it would be a good idea if The Reg started a data network reliability survey which runs continously and allows people to report whenever they have a problem with the data network on their phones (logs phone operator, 2G or 3G connection, area of the country & length of downtime). Every six months or so, the results could be published to try and shame the operators into giving a more reliable service (whether the operators take any notice of it is another matter...).
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