Orange 20 meg BB via BT WBC

PhillyG

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At present we are on an upto 8meg speed (despite all orange tariff's being advertised at upto 20meg), and normally get between 6.9-7meg as we're only 900 metres from the exchange, on same road. Our exchange was upgraded to 20meg via BT WBC, yet it is now march and we're still on the upto 8meg service, and it nows says on orange's website our estimated speed should be 17meg (same as that BT estimate), so I am wondering if we'll ever get upgraded without having to enter another contract (I mean why would you want to stay with a company that never offers you anything?)
I had a right go at orange when they first took over from wanadoo, because we signed up for an upto 8 meg service and was put on upto 2meg because they hadn't put their own equipment in our exchange (LLU), yet had tons of billboards all round town saying upto 8 meg which is a lie when max is 2. Now though orange has de-LLU'd all the exchanges so that'll mean alot of people will of been downgraded from upto 20meg to 8meg. It's all very well saying it's upto, but upto 8 and upto 20 are 2 different things, to say upto 20 when the max is only upto 8 is a blatant lie as far as I'm concerned. Heads should roll lol
 
Have you thought of also contacting BT? I've been having problems with my Orange (BT WBC) broadband recently and one of the Openreach engineers that visited my house started doing a bit of a sales pitch for BT Infinity :D

IMO, BT WBC customers get the worst deal - you're getting a second rate service from BT and your ISP is powerless to do anything about speed or stability problems.
 
1. Have you thought of also contacting BT?

2. IMO, BT WBC customers get the worst deal - you're getting a second rate service from BT and your ISP is powerless to do anything about speed or stability problems.
1. There is no point in doing that the OP is an Orange Customer. As I said earlier he/she should call Orange

2. That is actually a very serious allegation. If you can prove it then ofcom could levy an enormous fine on BT Wholesale. They must treat all ISP equally. The ISP is far from powerless, they get what they pay for. If they feel that BTW are treating them unfairly vs. BT Retail, they can also call ofcom.

In fact the performance of BT Wholesale based services that one gets varies tremendously from ISP to ISP. It depends on how they configure the products from BTW. For example, many ISPs supply perfectly acceptable performance from BTW based service whilst others are truly dreadful.
 
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1. There is no point in doing that the OP is an Orange Customer. As I said earlier he/she should call Orange

I meant contact BT as a potential "new customer" - NOT to fix the current problem.

2. That is actually a very serious allegation. If you can prove it then ofcom could levy an enormous fine on BT Wholesale. They must treat all ISP equally. The ISP is far from powerless, they get what they pay for. If they feel that BTW are treating them unfairly vs. BT Retail, they can also call ofcom.

I am an Orange broadband customer. The service was reasonable on LLU, it took a while for them to get it all working properly but I think I only had on average around one disconnect a month. I used to get around 4mbps but the best I can get now (after 6 Openreach engineer visits) is around 2mbps.

It took a lot of phone calls with Orange to finally get BT to investigate these problems and it felt like a game of chinese whipers - I'd explain exactly what the problem was over the phone only to have an Openreach engineer look at me blankly when I opened the door.

When I was explaining the problem to one Openreach engineer (random disconnects, awful download speed, etc.), he said that I wouldn't get these sorts of problems if I was a BT customer and I would definitely get a lot better than 20mbps if I was on BT Infinity... I consider that a sales pitch.

Neighbour across the road is a BT customer and gets 4mbps.

In fact the performance of BT Wholesale based services that one gets varies tremendously from ISP to ISP. It depends on how they configure the products from BTW. For example, many ISPs supply perfectly acceptable performance from BTW based service whilst others are truly dreadful.

Hence why I said WBC customers get the worst deal.
 
1. When I was explaining the problem to one Openreach engineer (random disconnects, awful download speed, etc.), he said that I wouldn't get these sorts of problems if I was a BT customer and I would definitely get a lot better than 20mbps if I was on BT Infinity... I consider that a sales pitch.

2. Hence why I said WBC customers get the worst deal.
1. What he said was simply not true apart from the comment about BT Infinity.

2. Put simply they don't. ISPs other, than Orange deliver perfectly a good service so it just can't be WBC's fault.

How an ISP deals with a fault that needs Openreach involvement varies tremendously but has one thing in common, calling Openreach costs the ISP (including BT Retail) money and so they try to avoid doing it. Some ISPs appear to be MUCH worse than others at trying to avoid calling Openreach and will even try to fob the customer off. (This can occur with LLU customers as well as those on IPStream, WBC, or other BTW products, BTW.) Even when Openreach do get on the case, I'm afraid that Chinese whispers can kick in partly, in my opinion, due the appallingly low level of training given to Call Centre staff. (To say nothing of dreadful language skills.) In other words these problems are endemic to the system, rather than a problem with WBC as such, often exacerbated by the approach taken by the ISP.
 
1. What he said was simply not true apart from the comment about BT Infinity.

Fair enough, I'm just repeating what I was told. I thought it wouldn't matter to Openreach whether I was a BT or Orange customer but all the Openreach engineers that visited my house all talked about WBC as though it was a second class service.

2. Put simply they don't. ISPs other, than Orange deliver perfectly a good service so it just can't be WBC's fault.

But seeing as both myself and the OP are Orange customers so I still stand by what I said. I have no direct experience of other ISPs.

How an ISP deals with a fault that needs Openreach involvement varies tremendously but has one thing in common, calling Openreach costs the ISP (including BT Retail) money and so they try to avoid doing it.

But surely BT Retail raising a call with Openreach is just a cross charge? All the money is still held within the BT Group?

Seems like a bad deal all round if Openreach effectively hold all the ISPs to ransom.
 

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