ISP Reviews by Justboy

I have been with this ISP for over 10 years, since they were Freeserve, Wanadoo and now Orange. I have been happy with the service for most of this time.

Connection quality has been good, I can only remember 2 or 3 times in the past 10 years when the connection has been dropped, and never for a long time. Speed has been OK too, since I've never had another ISP I don't really know speeds in my area too well, but it is rural/outskirts of town and seems to keep up with the national average reasonably well.

My major complaint with Orange has only arisen in the last couple of months, but it has persuaded me to look at changing isp. Recently I recieved a letter telling me I had downloaded 27GB during peak times in the previous month, and that this was exceeding the Orange FUP. If I proceeded to exceed this, Orange warned, they would take action against me. They didn't tell me what the download limit actually was in this letter! Next month, without further letters/warnings, Orange began throttling my connection. The speed it now achieves is a joke (sub 0.5meg), as I cannot even stream the lowest quality iPlayer videos properly.

I felt this was unjustified, as I could not fathom what I had been downloading that would add up to a sum total of 27GB. I also had no idea what the FUP limit actually was, or when peak hours were. So I put in a call to Orange. They informed me that my connection would be throttled between peak hours of 6pm to 12midnight, and that this would continue for "about 3 months" and would return to normal as long as i stopped exceeding the FUP. They still wouldn't tell me the monthly download limit.

Since I don't know what the FUP actually is, and I don't even think I broke it in the first place, I have lost trust with Orange. I don't feel that I can be sure that once speed is restored to normal, they won't just start throttling it again claiming another FUP violation. It seems ridiculous that they can virtually render useless a service I am paying money for, without having to disclose any details or even give me sufficient warning. The gas company doesn't cut off the gas unless you're a few months behind with your payments, after probably about 10 threatening letters. Why can my ISP send me one innocuous letter and then shut off my sevice?

In future I intend to switch to an ISP with a more transparent and open policy about download limits and throttling service, or preferably even an ISP where I pay for the amount of usage I want and there's no mysterious 'fair' usage policy.