Orange Broadband not so free

AN INQ reader who switched over to the free broadband service offered by France Telecom/Orange in the UK is regretting her decision. Technical support costs 50 pence per minute.

In order to qualify for 'free' broadband as a British Orange handset user , it's normally necessary to pick one of the latest 'animal' Orange tariffs which cost more than £30 per month.

The snag here is that these animal tariffs don't seem so 'text friendly' as previous Orange tariffs.

But her real compliant covers what happens when things go wrong. Those calling the standard Orange broadband helpdesk but have a 'free' connexion are told to redial and call a premium rate number which costs 50p per minute.

Regular broadband users don't have to pay this fee.

Submitting a support enquiry online instead seems pointless because the sender merely receives a classic reply instructing him/her to refresh Internet Explorer, etc.

The snag is that with monotonous regularity at the weekends access to Hotmail and Gmail mysteriously disappears. Only to be restored around 2 pm on the Sunday.

She can only speculate that something goes wrong with Orange's secure (https) connexions because the initial page will appear.

In her case, it's easily possible to attribute the problem directly to Orange because switching over to WiFi on the same computer (and using a neighbour's broadband connexion) instantly cures the problem.

You'd only need to spend about twenty minutes per month arguing with Orange over whose fault the problem is, to negate the advantage of paying nothing for the service.

The horror stories emanating from those with 'free' broadband connexions are now enough to put new customers off any broadband service regardless of its price. µ