advantages of Orange ADSL over Free

[montgolfiere]

we were moved to Free last Summer after Aliceadsl were swallowed by them. After a poor start we ended up last winter with 8+mb/s Download which was perfectly acceptable.
However around April the Freebox kept crashing... maybe 5 times a day. we contacted them and their solution was to cut our Downloadspeed to 2mb/s!!!! the crashing reduced but was not cured. after complaining they blamed the 'Line' and said there was notrhing they could do and couldn't/would't increase our speed back to 8mb/s

.... We swopped to Orange last week and we are now getting a 20 -30 mb/s Download speed. The Ornage contract is 10 euros a month more expensive but in my opinion well worth it.

We have 3 mobiles with Free and are satisfied with their service and the contract costs so will be staying with them for this service.

[russell]

Don't Orange own the drops? Perhaps they degrade them to encourage people to change then restore them - end cynical mode

Russell

[Nigel]

As a matter of interest what speed did Orange offer you prior to taking their service.....seems an enormous difference between the two operators

[martyn94]

As a matter of interest what speed did Orange offer you prior to taking their service.....seems an enormous difference between the two operators

I doubt that you can generalise "Orange good; Free bad". As Russell has said, Orange run the local loop whoever you buy your ADSL from. As I recorded somewhere up this forum, I found Free were persistent to the point of being tiresome in bullying Orange and me to get the maximum performance from Orange's copper. But that does not, of course, exclude the possibility that montgolfière ran into some specific local hitch with Free.

[montgolfiere]

As a matter of interest what speed did Orange offer you prior to taking their service.....seems an enormous difference between the two operators

up to 40... the max so far has been 35!!
the general consensus i have come across i that Orange is better than the trest. our postie said she was delivering a Orangebox in the next village last week for the same reason as us!!! Free really were not interested in sorting our problems out satisfactorily... i spent 45 mins arguing that they should increase our speed back to 8mbs... but they would only offer the 2mbs....