Tuesday, September 08, 2009

The future's bright, the future's Orange

I have been a T-Mobile customer for years and was a One 2 One customer before that. But is has to be admitted: those networks have always been a bit naff.

Orange, by contrast, has always been cool. I used to think their The future's bright, the future's Orange commercials would have made wonderful party political broadcasts for the Liberal Democrats.

So away with all this concern about the new service's market share. I welcome the merger.

4 comments:

Lavengro said...

Orange is France Telecom, which used to be known as Wanadoo. They were so unbelievably awful that there were web sites in Spain about how to escape from them. I ended up suing Wanadoo after they changed my email address without telling me -- and that wasn't the only thing that I sued them for -- successfully, I may add.

When I see their successor Orange, the word bargepole irresistibly springs to mind.

Stephen Bigger said...

I still can't use my Orange (freeserve) email. In an 18 month contract I was off-line for 2 times one month. I have just sufffered five months of intermittent connection which means no use of the second telephone, or i-player, and inability to upload a photograph since I was 20 seconds online, 20 seconds offline 24 hours a day. Solved now, just, with compensation - but I have to say I couldn't line an alternative to switch to with benefit.
So not a lib-dem metaphor perhaps?

Jonathan Calder said...

Perhaps all their money goes on making commercials?

dreamingspire said...

I moved to Orange in 2000 after setting up my own small business, working from home, after another business had failed, and Orange happily gave me an account. All went well for several years (apart from the problem that 1.8GHz doesn't penetrate buildings as well as 900 MHz), but then the signal level at my home dropped to the extent where I was getting text msges to say that I had not answered the phone, but the phone had not rung. Orange said they 'have a problem with the transmitter', but it didn't get better. Eventually they told me where the transmitter is, and I realised that they had taken my local cell out - but they would not admit that. Soon I discovered that there is a very poor signal on a line through my house, a mate's house and a local pub.
Then the local paper blew the gaff, taking up a case for a family who signed a 3 phone contract and then found that they had no signal at home in an urban residential area - Orange were forced to give them their money back and cancel the contract. I moved to another service provider (was able to cancel without penalty).
Orange are short of spectrum capacity, so have taken out cells in residential areas where the financial yield is low. Even the commentators are saying that Orange and T-Mobile together (both using 1.8 Ghz) should be able to provide a 'better network'. So let them merge, please.