RSSOrange France admits to capping iPhone 3G speeds
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published August 28, 2008, 12:22 PM
Hit with a petition from thousands of irate French customers, wireless operator Orange has reportedly admitted to throttling download speeds for the iPhone 3G, and is promising some relief by September 15.
According to France Info -- the online service of Radio France -- iPhone carrier Orange has now admitted to a policy of restricting download speeds to only 200 to 300 Kbps.
"3G+ -- with which the iPhone is compatible -- can theoretically reach speeds almost four times higher," according to an account in the French publication, translated into English via Google's translation engine.
When contacted by France Info, however, Orange admitted that download speeds on the French network has been "deliberately limited" to no more than 384 Kbps.
Then, "after a technical meeting held Monday evening at the headquarters of Orange in Paris, the operator [promised] that the [download speeds] of iPhones will be increased up to 1 Mbps from 15 September," France Info said. "This bonus speed [will] be implemented automatically without the need [for] users to have to re-configure their devices."
As previously reported in BetaNews, users in France have been complaining that Orange France performs slow downloads to Apple's new iPhone, when much higher speeds are possible on competing STR's mobile network in France. Meanwhile, in an informal survey by Wired, users in the neighboring countries of Germany and the Netherlands reported the fastest 3G download speeds worldwide, amounting to roughly 2,000 Kbps.
Orange's decision to raise download speeds to 1 Mbps (1,000 Kbps) came one day after a group of angry French customers started circulating a petition. Now signed by more than 4,500 users, the petition demands that "Orange respects today its contractual commitment allowing [access] to [3G+ for] subscribers who pay for it."
Laughable. :
France Info said. "This bonus speed [will] be implemented automatically without the need [for] users to have to re-configure their devices."
This is pathetic. Of course they wouldn't need to reconfigure their devices...this is a server-side setting...not client. They are simply trying to get a small 'win' for something that they blatantly did against customers. They probably couldn't support the bandwidth and simply wanted to get the revenue that the iPhone could bring them. Now they really screwed themselves. I'm surprised, knowing the French, that they didn't just abandon ship and runaway.
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|France Info's article focuses on the iPhone, but the bandwidth is capped for all devices. Basically Orange was selling HSDPA (3G+) phones for use on their 3G+ network, but would only allow 3G speeds... Busted!
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|On behalf of all the anti-Apple fanboys:...It is still Apple's fault!
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|I'm lost. Anti-anything is just weakness in disguise. You should be Pro-something. It takes more strength to stand for what you believe, than to fight against something you are against.
Your statement is like saying 'Opera 9.51 is more Acid3-Compatible than all other browsers, and it's the Internet's fault'. It's a leading statement that has more false implications in it than truth.
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|That's just wrong. If I were Apple I would take Orange to the EU then sue them. They must have laws against that.
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|Why? I daresay the cap was network-wide, not specific to the iPhone. Customers could sue if they had a Service-Level-Agreement or similar, but I don't think Apple can or would do anything about it.
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|True. In which case, all device-makers should take Orange to the EU, instead of just Apple. This hurts the device makers as much as the customers. To sit idly by make the implication that the device makers *condone* this activity...
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