Is there a Tech Detective here who can shed light on the following please ?
I have lived in the same house for 20 yrs in rural Vendee, and have had an Orange internet service for all of that time which in the past was pretty reliable except after heavy and prolonged rain.
A couple of years ago they started installing Fibre in the village, and since then there have been frequent interruptions to internet service.
I don’t have the Fibre because I simply don’t need it, and neither do I need my monthly fee to rise by 33%.
Recently, the internet service interruptions have become more frequent and more prolonged (several hours at a time), and it has now become a daily occurrence which can happen at any hour of the day or night.
Rebooting the Livebox does no good apart from bringing up a message that says “Reseau Orange non détecté”.
So the last 4 times that the service has gone down I have phoned the Orange English Language Helpline (using the same landline that the internet uses), sometimes within a few minutes of service failure, and sometimes after it has been down for some hours.
Each time, while I listen to the recorded Helpline welcome message, and before I have had the option to select any options, the internet service magically reconnects as I watch.
So the first time was just ‘Happenstance’, and the second time was no doubt ‘Coincidence’, but with the 3rd and 4th consecutive occasions this is becoming beyond the realms of mathematical likelihood.
Also, it does not seem to matter whether it is during office hours or late at night, phoning the Helpline reinstates the service before I have been able to speak to anyone.
I’m curious to know how this magic re-connection can occur.
So does anyone have any inkling of what is going on ?
By the way; No I have not been drinking nor consuming strange mushrooms.
I have the helpline number on ‘Speed dial’ now so as to ease the process of re-establishing my internet connection.
I don’t know the answer to your problem but why would a fibre connection cost 33% more?
We swapped over, no charge for the connection and the same monthly charge afterwards.
Just get fibre from someone who is not Orange, and pay a lot less that what you do now.
You are aware that in having a ‘real’ analogue telephone line you are paying Orange for the privilege at about €20 per month (can’t remember the exact figure but it’s not far off). You can get Fibre with a digital phone for about €23 per month from RED, and that is a monthly contract that doesn’t suddenly double after 6 or 12 months like some offers. Other deals are available.
If your thinking ‘but I want a real analogue phone line’ then in a couple of years you wont have that choice and it will be taken from you anyway.
We had trouble with Orange about this time last year.Fibre lines had been installed a few years ago,but we hadn,t bothered switching as our speed was fine.Every couple of months we were getting emails from Orange"suggesting" that we should switch to fibre,each mail also came with notification that our monthly cost was going up by 2€,this happened about six or seven times,then one morning we were cut off,had a text from them soon after to say that the"technical fault" would take five weeks to fix and advised us to visit an Orange shop for an air box.We did this and were told that the reason it would take so long was because we were not on fibre.We signed up for fibre and it was all fixed within a few days.We now pay 15€ a month more know for a speed that is no better than what we had before.Will let you draw your own conclusions as to what went on.
Fibre’s far from perfect, but prior to it I frequently had problems. I found if I popped into the Orange shop in town and told them, they’d provide a free 4G airbox, and I’d use that until it came back.
I don’t know what subcontractors they used to install the poles for fibre, but I saw them with the machine sticking them into spots that were really unsuitable. Some were installed wonky, and about a year and half later, many have collapsed. I’m also seeing fibre cable laying down in ditches, and poles that are snapped or missing. During storms, tree branches bring down wires too if it isn’t workmen accidentally cutting through it. It’s amazing fibre works at all !
If you’re saying that your fibre service is no faster than your previous ADSL service then it sounds like something is seriously wrong with your setup.
It seems extemely hard in F to get any refund when service on a monthly paying contract is not provided. I’d be looking for pro rata refund for each incident, the admin of that should drive them nuts, plus a reasonable penalty per incident.
But providers seem culturally able to diss consumers like this. There was however a very recent thread on SF by smeone who had problems over months wth Orange who did achieve refund in the end.
How about approaching Orange with I want to continue paying x per month and from my side I d not need fibre but if it’s a preference of Orange to provide me fibre then offer me a fibre package at the same price
You were lucky. We got about 2-3mbs download , 1mb upload if we were lucky.
Now with fibre: 900mb upload and download
Gone are the days when I had to remove the large file photos foolish friends used to attach to their emails while the messages were still on my webmail, if I was ever to be able to download into the inbox on my computer.
I currently pay €29.99 a month and Orange want €40 to have the Fibre.
However, would I still have unlimited free calls to the USA as I have at present I wonder, and would my phone number remain unchanged ?
Anyway, if the phone worked through the router box, and it became defective, then I wouldn’t be able to phone to ask them to fix it.
Before anyone suggests reporting faults by using a ‘Portable’, I would like to point out that if you give people a mobile number these days, then they ASSUME that one has a smartphone, and start sending all sorts of links, QR codes, and downloadable apps, all of which my mobile phone does not do.
So, I hear some folks thinking that I should get a smartphone, but the problem is that they simply don’t work for me. I have worn and calloused finger tips, and often the touch screen weighing scales at the supermarket won’t work for me either. Add in the fact that my personal magnetic aura is somewhat stronger than most folks, and often my hand only has to be near a smartphone (not touching it), and the flipping thing will rush off into a world of its own. I could walk through the metal detector at the airport stark naked and the blasted thing would still go off !
So a smartphone will never be an option for me.
Thanks for providing the answer Billy. I suppose eventually the “wetting current” will no longer be able to provide the temporary fix, and when that happens then Orange can come and fix it as there will then be a permanent fault for them to find.
Trouble is that they then want you to download an app, do their testing work for them, and report the fault by means of the app that I don’t have.
“Vous devez utiliser l’application pour signaler les défaillances Monsieur.” followed by ‘Click’ and Brrrr Brrr Brrr.
Thanks for that. The issue of free calls to the USA is extremely important to us, especially when friends and family members become unwell as at present.
I had a not dissimilar problem with my TalkTalk fibre connection in the UK.
They bundle it with an Amazon eero router - only controllable (to a very limited extent) via an “app” and needs one to sign up to an online account - decided red flags as far as I am concerned.
So that was in the “not happening” box and I stuck a PC running as a router (the same type of SBC I used for the Frankenbox project) on the end of the conection (perfectly legit - they even tell you to do that in the case of possible faults with the eero).
Which was great until the link started to run slowly and I spoke to customer (lack of) support - “have to run diagnostics, you must plug the eero in”.
Thankfully I realised that the link was slow because of a failing Ethernet cable which was only giving 100Mbps, not 1Gbps.
But no doubt the day will come when it’s “sign up or not have a connection”.
No-one assumes I don’t have a smart-phone anymore, Robert, and although I have rather dainty fingers , touch screens are a nono for me, my Doro has nice big buttons that I can push in.
Why is Sosh necessary, that’s what I still pay with Orange?
People claim CS is better. Not sure how given that its basically the same organisation and the same engineers as Orange but that seems to be the perception.
, touch screens are a nono for me, my Doro has nice big buttons that I can push in. 