I’ve been with Orange for a few years and I’m fairly content with everything apart from the price: c. 40€ for 6Mb/s.
Sosh (Orange’s no-frills sister company) can offer the same speed for about half the price so I’ve decided to change.
Going through the online process, Sosh recognises me as an Orange customer. If I take up a contract with them, will they cancel my Orange contact? If not, what steps will I need to take to ensure I’m not paying twice for one service!
can it be done through the Orange English speaking helpline?
Just the cancellation bit if Sosh require you to apply online perhaps.
How’s your speed with ADSL? Might it be a question of “out of the frying pan” so to speak and worthy of jumping ship altogether to Bouygues for 4G (sans engagement) so you keep options open.
I did try once via the Orange helpline but for convoluted reasons it was not possible!
There’s no Bouygues 4G available here - I tried it with a payg sim and it was hopeless. I’ve also tried SFR with similar results. If I change to a Bouyges ADSL box the initial price is OK but after 12 months it would increase to just under 40€/month so no real advantage.
On ADSL I get about 7Mb/s with a Livebox 4. I’m about 3km from the exchange so that’s as good as I’ll get, I suspect. However, that exchange is due for a fibre upgrade in the next 12 months so I’d expect my ADSL speed to improve.
Do it! I changed from Orange to Sosh some time ago. It was simple to do on line &, no, you won’t be charged by both businesses. There was also the added bonus of Orange taking back their rented Livebox 2 & my getting a free Livebox 4 from Sosh.
AFAIR we now pay 50% less than we did for indentical service.
only if they then take fibre to the home - many exchanges are already fibre equipped for inter communication but it is fibre to the house you will require to benefit strongly. The weak link is the overground from the exchange to the home via copper. The whole system is really only as good as its weakest link.
also bear in mind that the antenna capability of the 4G router is infinitely more powerful than that of a mobile phone and improvements to the 4G network are ongoing as France rolls out it internet capability program particularly to rural areas. Orange too have a 4G offering (with limited data - 200Go ISTR)
I’m aware of the final mile issue. Our local exchange is still on copper. A friend in a nearby village that has already had fibre installed found that their (copper final mile) internet went from about 4Mb/s to about 15Mb/s.
According to online coverage maps, Bouygues does not have any 4G coverage here.
Orange do have very fast 4G coverage here, but my monthly costs would actually increase…
Thank you, Graham. That’s one of the sites I use and it offers a useful guide as to what signal strength you will experience in theory. But not necessarily in practice…
That would be because the modelling tools used for coverage prediction are an absolute kludge. They also tend to have been coded by Scandinavians who live in timber homes and hence only allow a few dBm path loss for indoor coverage predictions whereas French stone buildings with 50cm exterior walls are nearly Faraday cages in comparison.
Ain’t that the truth. Many years ago, I was almost thrown off my Antenna Design module for daring to suggest to the lecturer that we’d be pretty much as accurate if we just guessed the coverage based on instinct rather than rely on the tedious calculations we had to perform.
From what I’ve read, it’s that there’s no-one to talk to on the phone or in a shop. All customer support is conducted online.
I had problems with the connection to the house until a few years ago when I persuaded an Orange engineer to devote 4 pairs to my connection rather than one
The internet speed and reliability improved immediately …
Please remind me about the €50 penalty charge when leaving Orange. They charged me when I left in 2018 or 19 and we had joined in 2006. I have asked before but I can’t again find the posting. I seem to remember it does no longer apply.
We changed to Sosh from Orange several years ago because of the mobile offer from Sosh. We retained the Orange box and all has gone smoothly. A few months ago the billing was seperated into the internet to Orange 24.99 and the phone to Sosh 24.99, fixed and mobile. For the phone we get the free metropolitan calls and free international calls. Unlimited text and over 100gb internet on the mobile. Any time there has been a problem it has been solved quckly and efficiently. I answered one of their surveys and commented on non existant mobile signal in the house. We got a phone call then received a box free of charge to connect to the internet box which gives us mobile access in the house . There was no penalty fee for the change and a friend who has also just changed from Orange to Coriolis did not incur a fee.
Has anyone tried haggling with Orange over the price, maybe by threatening to leave? I used to do this with my provider in Germany once a year and always got a discount.
