Review: Orange Mobile Broadband

Orange Broadband Review

In a nutshell: Orange Mobile Broadband costs pretty much the same as mobile broadband from 3-Mobile, O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and offers good connection speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps. With starting prices at under a tenner a month, this is a good option for personal users.
Best buy: Orange Mobile Broadband (from £9.79 per month)

The Orange Mobile Broadband service has been updated in December 2008 to offer a choice of three tariffs. For £14.68 a month you get a free USB dongle, connection speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps and up to 3 Gbytes of data. Low users can opt to pay just £9.79 per month for up to 1 GB of data and high users can get 10 GB per month for £24.47 per month. You'll need to sign up to an 18 month contract. The system is compatible with Windows and Apple Mac operating systems.

Orange Broadband Consumer Reviews

Love your mobile network? Hate it? Please share your experiences to help other people choose the mobile broadband network that's best for them. Please do not review this network if you have not used it. This is a review site, not a forum, so please don't just ask questions. Please do not use swear words or offensive language, and please, no advertising!

Average rating from 41 reviews:

Reviewed by briny from england on 30th Jun 2009
About website reviews....review sites like these where you hear the 1st hand reviews of people who have used these packages are what people should be listening to when making a decision. If you waste your time and go to all those sites with one expert review dont waste your time. These type of reviews are totally unqualified and made by a person who's site posting the review is sponsored by a mobile company to write up a favourable review. Steer clear from these misleading 'paid for' reviews. Unfortunately too many people believe the so called 'experts'. When was the last time you went onto a branded website and read a review from an 'expert' (i say with my tongue glued to my cheek and laughing)that pointed out any of the horror's that lots of people here are experiencing...'never' is the answer...because they wouldn't get they're payoff from the service provider if they told the truth!! People always listen to the person on the street reviews who have used products first hand...not the so called 'experts' because they're interests lies not in the truth but in their pockets!!!
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Reviewed by geoff shilton from uk on 17th Jun 2009
update on my last. After waiting on hold for 41 minutes I had to end the call. Run out of battery. Orange, in my opinion you are absolutely useless in this area of your business. Get some more lines or operators. As a businessman I have far better things to do than wait 40 minutes to speak to you guys. You're in the phone business for lords sake so it cant be that difficult surely!? MUST TRY HARDER!!!!
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Reviewed by geoff shilton from uk on 17th Jun 2009
signed with Orange Mobile Broadband on their 3ghz dongle package 3 weeks ago. Since that time they have turned off the system once for no reason without notice and I have had cause to telephone their customer service number 3 times. As I write I have been waiting on the phone for 30 minutes and 52 seconds and counting..!!!!! The message they constantly give you REGARDLESS OF WHAT TIME OF DAY YOU CALL is ...." We are currently receiving a very high number of calls so you may experience a delay. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Please hold and we will answer your call as soon as possible." YO ORANGE DUDES...HAVING TO WAIT THIS LONG TO SPEAK TO SOMEONE IS MOST DEFINITELY AN INCONVENIENCE. WISH I'D GONE WITH VODAFONE OR ANYONE WHO DIDNT PAY LIP SERVICE TO CUSTOMER SERVICE AND TREATED THEIR CUSTOMERS WITH SUCH OBVIOUS DISDANE. P.S...WHEN I WANTED TO SIGN UP THEY COULDNT DO ENOUGH BUT NOW THEY'VE GOT MY SIGNATURE ON AN 18 MONTH CONTRACT ALL THAT SUPERFICIAL B******T HAS GONE OUT OF THE WINDOW. VERY DISAPPOINTED!!!!. STEER CLEAR OF ORANGE MOBILE BROADBAND.
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Reviewed by Mark from England on 12th Jun 2009
I agree I think orange mobile broadband is brilliant. Use it all over the uk and find the hsdpa for downloading is absolutely awesome. Everyone seems to slate orange as a company but the last 6 to 12 months i think? and i quote "They are 200 percent better than before". Maybe this has got something to do with new guy Tom Alexander. He did well at virgin and looks like he is doing well here too. Well done orange.
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Reviewed by pat mcconnell from scotland on 11th Jun 2009
it always works,never has lost the connection,but most of the time goes down to gprs or edge from 3G(which is very fast)for £10.79/mth it's ok.ps,saving a fortune not having to have BT landline rental.
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Reviewed by lawrence gould from United Kingdom on 27th May 2009
Avoid at all costs This 3g dongle is as slow as Internet connection was 15 years ago appalling Complete waste of money How about NO stars
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Reviewed by Luiz Camargo from UNITED KINGDOM on 21st May 2009
Ridiculous... I regret so much having a 18 month contract. I've been over-billed twice in a row, they provide a software that measures (estimates, according to them)usage, but the bill almost 50% more in terms of data, so I paid almost triple what I was expecting... And, they do nothing about it. I was told to use a third party data tracker to check my usage for a month & then go back to them... Run away from it!!!
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Reviewed by xyz from UK on 6th May 2009
its fine but speed is realy poor
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Reviewed by Karen Gray from England on 1st May 2009
Have no problem with the product. Only problem is you can not view your usage on your account. Therefore you will not know if you have gone over your usage until the dreaded bill arrives. In this day and age I can't see why they can't provide this information. I can only assume they want you to go over thus collecting yet more money from us. Has anyone else had the same problem???
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Reviewed by Jan U from Worcestershire on 29th Apr 2009
I have been having problems with my orange dongle now for about 6 weeks. Its an intermittant fault where it sometimes will and sometimes won't connect to the internet or it takes numerous attempts to connect to the internet. I have made loads of calls to orange but so far havn't managed to sort it. On several occasions i have waited patiently for 15mins to be put through to an adviser and got cut off!! I have better things to do with my evenings than spend an hour getting online or another hour trying to get customer service. I find the whole thing so frustrating and am not prepared to pay for a service that i can't or have difficulty using.
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Reviewed by Jen.W. from Warwickshire, UK. on 27th Apr 2009
The servie where I live is appalling. We have called Orange on a number of occassions. Everytime they give us a month free which is nice but we still can't use our internet. They have told us it's due to a mast that was due to be repaired on 13th April-so far no improvement. Our connection lasts about 10minutes max. Ver frustrating. Despite the above they will not let us out of the yearly contract-even more frustrating. AVOID!!
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Reviewed by owen roe fay from united kingdom on 22nd Apr 2009
I have just a few things to say about orange they are excellent and they have always had very high standards with me in every department.
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Reviewed by Matthew from England, Hampshire on 22nd Apr 2009
Fantastic for first 2 days - now stuck on edge gprs network which is terribly slow - HELP! How do I change settings to 3g???
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Reviewed by John Bull from United Kingdom on 20th Apr 2009
I'm utterly appaled with Orange's customer services - not only do they offer a lack of support when you're experiencing problems, they have hung on me as recently as yesterday (April 19th, 2009). The call centre for technical support is, I understand, located in India and when I get through, the people on the other end refuse to help me on queries unless the account holder speaks to thim (which is poor as I wasn't requesting any confidential information, only for them to give me instructions). Upon contacting them, they had difficulty understanding me and I was told to do the same things over and over again, and was refused to be spoken to because I was unable to telephone where I would be near me desktop computer. The telephone signal was also sub-standard and it was difficult to hear them due to obviously poor telephone lines. This is one of the worst customer services I have ever encountered, and I strongly recommend if you are considering moving to Orange, you stay well clear, as if you suddenly encounter a problem, chances are you'll have to figure it out for yourself. Sky Broadband or BT is highly recommended.
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Reviewed by sean harris from england on 16th Apr 2009
my girlfriend bout us the orange mobile broadband with 3gb download limit. we both were happy at first because usually the normal broadband packages (BT especially) charge more than what you are tols to pay, plus there was no phone line charge too. but now there is virgin who charge around the same as what we pay for mobile broadband and virgin are faster and unlimited download also withorange you have to ring them up too check your account so it costs us due to not having an orange phone. so what i say is if you want broadband to take anywhere with you then go for mobile because thats what you'll get but be careful of how much you use it and be ready for very slow speeds. otherwise you should opt for fixed line or cable broadband.
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Reviewed by Steve Bullock from United Kingdom on 13th Apr 2009
I come from a Customer Service background and I have to be honest Orange Customer Service India is shocking, worse since Orange Plc advised that India was being dropped over a 2 year period. Orange UK Customer Service is outstanding especially through Contact Us or direct to customer.service@orange.co.uk. They cannot deal with account related queries simply because of DPA and they are not 100% positive that the request is from the account holder. They are rated for performance and need to answer 13 emails an hour, of those emails answered they need to call between 20% to 40%, and over the last 6 years this service has got better and better. If you request that a call is made to you via email and you give a time and date and make sure you yourself are available they will make sure they call you. If you miss them they'll not rearrange it that's up to you, but they'll send you an email of your next steps which has always been accurate. Brilliant is not the word. Mind you if you get a reply from a Joe or George forget it, waste of time, try again.....
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Reviewed by Chris Morris from United Kingdom on 9th Apr 2009
I Have been loaned a dongle which is an Icon 225 and I have to wait about 20 Minutes to watch a 10 minute video on youtube ...It would be Quicker to get in my car and watch it at my mates house....Orange need to sort this out ...and Quickly before everybody chooses another network .....I would imagine that most people already have ....Come on ORANGE what ya playin at ?
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Reviewed by katie from uk on 1st Apr 2009
i'm really disgusted with orange, the lack of customer service is unbelieveable and you can never get through to anyone, even on there website. the coverage is fine, its just the treatment of the customer (myself) that is unacceptable. the billing system is wrong, why should i have to pay a month in advance when i only had mobile broadband 2 weeks? now there saying there going to cut me off. they activated it late after me having to call customer services several times and since then i've had nothing but trouble, you can't even write a letter of complaint and get a reply! do i recommend orange???? NO WAY.
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Reviewed by alice x from uk on 13th Mar 2009
orange is an ok broadband apart from the reception you get 300 free texts if you top up with £10 and if u top up with more you get alot so a pretty good broadband but the reception lets it down (i reccomend O2)
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Reviewed by Rob from uk on 24th Feb 2009
My mobile broadband works fine, normally between 1-2mbps. Make sure you change the settings to 3g only (if coverage allows) otherwise it will keep switching to edge/gprs which is very slow!! Also I use the clip and lead it comes with to attatch it to the top of my laptop as it seems to improve signal and prevents damage to the dongle. I broke my first dongle (was plugged straight into usb port and dog kept knocking it) and had a nightmare from Orange customer services to replace it, so be careful!!
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Reviewed by joe from uk on 26th Jan 2009
im 14 got it with my phone honestly it its shockingly bad..the activated it late so i had to go 15 days or so without internet when i had homework to do *wink* and when we did get it..well its just sooo slow grr cant download any songs or anything.. grr
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Reviewed by jonathan service from belfast, uk on 19th Jan 2009
I opted for a broadband dongle in July 2008 at first no problems found it good value, but from 1st november 2008 i can now only get gprs(2G) instead of the normal umts(3G) as of today 19th jan 2009 i can still only get 2G reception in an otherwise 3G area, i have contacted orange a few times to see what is going on all they can say to me is the mobile mast is being repaired and they give me a date when it should be fixed as of the 5th call i get the same answer, all they offer me is a credit against my account but i don't want that i want the service i signed up for they will not give a total refund as i can get 2G but 2G is useless it is slow and sometimes freezes when trying to get to emails or uploads and downloads, they will not let me cancell my contract as they are in breach for not providing the service i signed up for, they will only offer partial refund, my advice don't go for an orange dongle when problems arise like mine you are left with a less than perfect intern et i may as well switch to old fashioned dial up thats how slow 2G is.
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Reviewed by Anas from Carlos on 30th Dec 2008
Absolutely brillaint. I was give Orange Broadband free with my Orange mobile phone contract. I was very skeptical as to weather this broadband was going to work or not after reading all the negative feedback on the net. I set the broadband up anyway and to be honest for personal use at home it is brilliant. I would recommend this to anybody.
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Reviewed by Lisi from UK on 24th Dec 2008
If you've never had a problem with Orange broadband then you would probably give it four or five stars. When they work, they do work well. When they DON'T however they'll just fob you off with "we'll contact you in 24 hours" and a month later you're still having issues. We've been with them for just over a year now but are currently swapping to another provider. We don't even care about the original faults or cancellation fee. We are simply desperate to get away from Orage. All i can say to those who think Orange is great is this: Just you wait til you need to contact their customer service. Good luck. You'll need it.
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Reviewed by Elizabeth from UK on 24th Dec 2008
Don't do it. Just don't do it. Orange are evil.
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Reviewed by rachel from uk on 21st Dec 2008
incredibly slow, never known anything like it. cant download anything. tried to get itunes for my phone.... was up to 25 hours remaining before i decided not to bother
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Reviewed by Matthew from Northern Ireland on 16th Dec 2008
I am using orange mobile broadband, i dont know what speed im supposed to be getting but i end up with about 1.6mb download and around 200kbs upload which is good, but im connected to a 3g+/hsdpa network so thats why i have the high speed, but just go to google and type in "orange coverage" and type in your postcode and it will tell you if you have good coverage in your area, if you do then your speeds should be good.
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Reviewed by Kelly from UK on 12th Dec 2008
All I can say is if you're going to buy your mobile broadband from an indirect supplier (ie Carphone Warehouse or Phones 4 U) do you really think they have your best interests at heart when checking your coverage for a specific operator????? Of course not. They just want to sell you the product and then post-sales it all goes back to Orange. I've had a dongle with Orange for the last two months. They did the coverage checker on me and it worked. I've got great speeds and have no problems. They also told me that if I had problems then i could return in 14 days, so it's not like people don't have a chance...
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Reviewed by ks from UK on 10th Dec 2008
ive read a few reviews on orange mobile broadband and the majority seem to be... less than good so i thought i'd post my experience with it... being an orange mobile phone user i decided to see what it was like. I live in North Wales and the 3g signal on my k850i is somewhat patchy... well, installed on my the Icon 225 onto my mac and connected to the net and i'm getting 500k download speeds at the moment with a signal of 2 bars... okay, i've only had it for a day, but pages seem to load zippy enough, and living in the 'sticks' a bit, i never had fantastically high expectations for it anyway. i have also downloaded an application which recorded a speed of 112k/s (equivalent to 1.12mb broadband)... the only thing i would say is he 3gb download limit is very stingy - come on orange - u the limit before your competitos get the better of you!. Time will tell if its anygood in the long term, and maybe if i had more than 2 bars signal it might be even better, but no complaints so far.. (i'm also connected to it right now..
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Reviewed by Jes from England on 16th Nov 2008
Don't EVER get orange. They will suck you in, and if you want to get out during the 14 day cool off period, then they are kidding you. I live in a very civilised area, and we get good signal but it takes about 30 mins to load a web page. Most times it disconnects as the internet page times out due to the slowness. Orange asked us to bring our laptop into their shop to see if it would work... we don't LIVE in there shop so of course it's going to work. Be careful the only way they will take it back is if you get absolutely NO signal. Everywhere gets signal but it's SLOW very slow, so be warned.
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Reviewed by John from UK on 26th Oct 2008
Does not do what it saids on the tin. Slow connection speed, tested it on a checker web site, 300k max for download. nowhere near 1.8! Its has slow bloatware as dialer. However, it does have pretty good coverage and it works well on virgin trains due to extended orange transmitters.
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Reviewed by clare from Somerset, UK on 8th Oct 2008
I had the free laptop and 18month dongle contract with carphone warehouse. I've had this for a few months now and NEVER get disconnected or experienced any problems. I have a 3 mobile and get terrible reception in the property and only Orange and Vodafone work so I checked the coverage on both and made my decision. I reckon if you download lots of stuff on the internet this probably isnt for you but if like me you just check your emails and surf on the net its ideal! Orange customer service were extremely helpful when I first set this up so no probs there either. Im happy!
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Reviewed by Yogesh from Uk london on 4th Oct 2008
Well all i can say is !! think 1000 times before u switch to orange ... i rate it not even a half star. worse conntection. with worse coverage and slow speed. The conncetion get disconnected in a average of 1 hr a day . so when my download starts for movies or games . it gets disconnected and thats it start again . well and once i didnt get any broad band for nearly 1 month and yea its true and that was not enough even when i asked for whats going on in the orange customer service they say even they dont know the problem .. it was a big prob for 30 days no net?? thats a lame business. and customer support team is in India. how will they know whats going on in uk. and those ppl dont even bother analysing the prob as they switch every hour and dont even bother .i m currently paying 19 £ a month for this piece of junk .well as far as im concerned I m never gonna use any product of orange ... never in my life
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Reviewed by Steve from Birmingham, UK on 2nd Oct 2008
Signed up for Orange mobile BB when I renewed my phone contract with a view to cancelling my BT line at home. I really wish I hadnt bothered. Having been with Orange for 6 years I have never had any signal problem. Now, after receiving a message from Orange saying the service in my area had been improved my phone will only work in the kitchen, I can only connect to the mobile BB network by attaching the dongle to a 10 feet long USB extension and attaching that with a sucker to the kitchen window and suffer regular disconnections. I have installed a speed tester on the laptop and my average connection upload speed is 0.06 mb/s and download 0.15 mb/s - awful. I have had to buy a 3 mobile BB dongle on PAYG as a backup and have my BT line reconnected.
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Reviewed by Fez from Manchester on 21st Aug 2008
Constant disconnections. Poor signals even in areas they say are good signal areas. Disappointed as i used to think orange had the best coverage
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Reviewed by declan from england on 11th Aug 2008
well all i can say is i do like orange mobile broad band but thats because i checked my postcode in an orange store they have all issues and a coverage checker accurate to say 100metres so my opinion is that next time you think of buying go to orange them selves
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Reviewed by Dave from Glasgow on 31st Jul 2008
I asked Phones4u about coverage in certain areas of Glasgow and was told there was good coverage all over Glasgow. That isn't true. Spent a lot of time with Orange support, eventually got passed on to level 2 support who said I am on the fringe of one aerial and I had been missold the device. Orange techs say that there aren't enough aerials in the Glasgow area to provide a good service in some areas at the moment, they are planning more but not in the next six months. In the evenings the data rate can go down to around 1600 bits per second (old fashioned teleprinter speeds!). The max download I've managed in one month is about 330Mbytes a long way short of 3Gbytes. Why don't Orange have a mobile broadband checker on their website? I think contract sellers are basing their predictions on the 3G mobile phone coverage checker which doesn't mean you will get good data transfer. I'm now left chasing the seller with trading standards. It's time someone like ofcom came down heavy on these folk.
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Reviewed by Darran from Wales on 26th Jul 2008
I bought Orange Mobile Broadband from Carphonewarehouse, they did a check on my postcode (I live in Cardiff) & told me i was in a very good coverage area and would get up to 1.8 mbps. I dont get anywhere near that, around 100k if i'm lucky.
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Reviewed by myles from england on 22nd Jul 2008
Its worked perfectly for me over the past 3-4 years. Had no problems with it. GOOOOOD!
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Reviewed by scott from UK on 8th Jul 2008
I think orange mobile broadband is great, i work for carphonewarehouse, i have orange and also 3 mobile broadband, i live in sheffield city centre and find orange far quicker with better signal, as i write this im downloading vista service pack 1 and the orange mobile broadband networks logged onto 3g+ and im getting 180k a sec download speed which equates to almost 2meg speed which is great, at most on 3s network i might get 1/2 a meg speed !!
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Reviewed by MR Hassan from UK on 6th Jul 2008
according to what you are told when you enquire about the dongle and it's speed you are told it has speed of 1.8 Mps minimum, but when you start browsing, the speed is very, very slow that it switchs from HSPDA to UMTS and to GPRS which has data tranfer rate of 34 - 48 kbps very murch slower than even a dail up modem. Now why not tell the customers about the reallity in speed, rather than dicovering after signing up?
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You can read more Orange Broadband reviews at RecommendedBuys UK.

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