Cyber-Island Internet
21. Jan, 2010 
32 Comments
I woke up this morning ( Thursday 21 January 2010) to find my livebox blinking. The worst came to my mind.
Recap to some few days back.
On 26 December 2009, I lost internet connection at 23.45. The next day, I found out that there is also no phone working at my place. I went to my neighbours next door only to find out that he had the same issue like me. No phone and No internet. Later on that day, I went to the shop and found out that there is no working phone in the locality. I tried phoning Orange Mauritius Customer Care using my mobile but all their numbers are either busy or there had no one to answer my calls. After some few tries, I accepted defeat and I phoned a friend who works at Orange Mauritius. ( No, I don’t intend to reveal who he/she is. So, don’t bother asking me). He told me that some one stole the cables at the exchange station at Grand bay and thus, the users won’t be having neither internet nor phone for some few days. Days passed and we finally reached 1st January 2010. And I was kinda happy because my neighbour just got her phone and internet working. I thought that I might be next, but I was wrong. On the 4th January 2010, I phoned Orange Customer Care from my neighbour’s place to know why I’m still without a working phone and internet. After listening to their awesome music crap music for 18 minutes, a lady answered my call. I explained to her in a nice way what my problem was. She made as if I was the only one in my locality without a working phone. ( Damn it, will they ever learn not to hide information from their clients?) She nicely told me to wait while she goes to check why I did not have a working phone and internet. And again, I was made to hear the awesome music crap music. After 2 mins of waiting, the phone magically disconnected. I phoned Orange Customer Care using the same number and this time, no one answered my call for another 10 mins. (I was very happy to have been in contact with such an excellent Customer Care. They should be awarded the Best Customer Care Service.) Then, I decided to give it a try using my mobile. After waiting for 2 mins, some one answered my call ( another customer care agent). Firstly, I told him about my previous experience with another customer care and guess what? He made as if he is not interested in taking my complain. Then I was told that a technician will come by my place to check why I don’t have a working phone. And note that the technician NEVER came.I finally got connected to the internet on the 7th January. ( Kindly note that in between 4th January and 7th January, there were other issues with the Customer Care but I won’t write about that else, this post will be too long.)
Back to the present. (Thursday 21st January 2010).
Around 09.00, I had a max download speed of:
Isn’t this awesome. 834Bytes/sec for a 61449Bytes/sec(60KB/sec) connection! And do you know what percentage does that represent? I was receiving only 1.36% of my speed.
I disconnected the livebox and waited for it to reconnect again. This time, there was an improvement in the speed.
3.66 KB/sec for a 60KB/sec! This is just amazing.
I was on point of throwing the livebox out of my window but then I decided to switch off both my pc and the livebox before I crash any of those. I switch it back around noon. And I was really pleased with the service being provided to me by my Internet Service Provider.
Can this get any worst? I don’t think so!
I decided to log on facebook using mobile to check if I was the only one having such issues( No need to say that I was not but since Orange Mauritius Customer Care will be reading this post, I have to say it because everyone know how they are!)
Here comes the interesting part of the story:
Arriving at 15.30, I received a phone call from Orange Mauritius Customer Care. First, he asked me if my home and internet was working. I told him the problem I have ( my connection is still slow) today and his reply was just amazing. He made me aware that I did 21gb from 9 January to 21 January and thus, FUP (fair usage policy) is being applied to me. I will experience slow speed till the end of the month. As soon as the month changes, my speed will be back to normal. (Important notice Orange Mauritius: If on the 1st of Feb 2010, I have a crap speed like right now, I will make you see different colours. I won’t then think before going to the media.) I then asked him what is the limit for a 512kbps speed. I was shocked to hear the answer. The limit is 5gb. After exceeding the 5gb, the speed will decrease. I then asked for any upgrade in package. I was told to either upgrade for 1mbps connection( Limit is 10gb. Who is dumb enough to upgrade to 1 mb only to use 10 gb? I use 5gb per day using a 512kbps speed. I will eat my 10gb on a 1mb speed in 1 day.) or upgrade to 2mb connection which has unlimited download. And the 2mbps speed cost Rs2,999 per month. I then asked him by how much my speed will decrease. And he did not even bothered to answer that question. I was indirectly told that, he has no idea. Oh by the way, he told me that Orange cannot guarantee a good international speed. They can only guarantee local speed. He even asked me to perform a local speed test which I refused. I don’t use local speed. I don’t surf 24/24 on the rubbish local websites!!
As soon as I finished talking to him, I did a speed test.
So, if you exceed your 5gb limit, Orange Mauritius can basically give you any speed. Even if it is unfair. I’m receiving 171/512. Less than half of the 512.(speedtest done at 16.00. I had to wait 10 mins for the page to open and a further 5 mins for the speed test to complete.)
Speed test at 17.00
So, Orange Mauritius Customer Care, Am I the only one having issues with slowness?
Still not satisfied? I was sent this message through text and no, I won’t reveal who the person is.
So, I’m the only one having slowness issues. Cool.
Next time you decide to make as if the user is the only one having slowness issues, make sure that the user lives in the middle of a forest. We live in 2010. There are many ways for us to know that the connection is epic slow! !
Oh by the way, what is a broadband connection?
The FCC of 2009 defines “Basic Broadband” as data transmission speeds exceeding 768 kilobits per second (Kbps), or 768,000 bits per second.(Link)
So, it means that in Mauritius 90% of the users do not have a broadband connection. This is good to know! !
What is strange is that, Orange Mauritius Customer care told some users that the situation will be back to normal at 12.30 while I got a phone call for exceeding the FUP. Why do we have 2 stories? Why can’t Orange Mauritius decide to which one they want to stick; either FUP or techical difficulties on network!!!!
As ending, I decided that I can’t bother with this rubbish slowness. I decided to write letters of complain to ICP, ACIM, Ministry of Telecommunications, ICTA, Radio Plus, Le defi Media group, Competition Commission of Mauritius and of course, to Orange Mauritius. Paying Rs750+vat to have a rubbish speed just because I exceeded my FUP is unacceptable to me and I find it very unfair.
A note: I can’t even change ISP since Orange has a “monopole” on the internet services in Mauritius. So, I’m stuck with their rubbish speeds! We badly need a new ISP which can provide a healthy competition to Orange. (Don’t talk about Nomad or Emtel).
Update from yadhav:
“I seriously think it’s not Orange Mauritius this time but a repair in the fibre optic cables. There was even a communique in the newspaper.”
Then why was I told that I’m being FUP? ? Can’t Orange Mauritius stick to only 1 version ! !
Malheureusement, ena ene séga ki explique ca situation la net: “Rhum la napa bon meme, mais to boire même”…
If Mauritius Telecom can afford such arrogance and enjoy this feeling of being “untouchable”, it’s simply because we, as clients, need their service, no matter how bad it is.
At the end of the day, “nou soutire zot”.
Hi,
I’m just getting started with my new blog. Would you want to exchange links on our blog-rolls?
BTW – I’m up to about 100 visitors per day.
@1132nd–> We need a new ISP which can provide competition to Orange. Because Orange has the “monopole” of internet in Mauritius and we, internet users, are forced to use their services. Had it been another good ISP, I would definitely kick Orange out of my house. But we all know how reliable Nomad is and how cheap Emtel is.
My Facebook status update @ 16.30 Wednesday 20 January 2010:
Twitter is down because of the new strong 6.1-magnitude aftershock which struck Haiti some minutes ago. Also, there will be some internet perturbations tomorrow from 5 in the morning to 10 because of repairs of fibre optic cables. Anyway, it’s sad for those who are in Haiti for the moment. Courage to them and hope everything gets well as soon as possible!
I seriously think it’s not Orange Mauritius this time but a repair in the fibre optic cables. There was even a communique in the newspaper.
PS: This comment should by no means mean that Orange Mauritius is a good ISP.
But Yadhav, I was told that my speed is slow because they are applying FUP. So, which one is true? Fibre optic down or FUP or something else?
Orange Mauritius is totally #noob and unreliable. Just read that this was because of the fibre optic thing and they are telling you that it’s because of FUP. They don’t even know what they are saying! And I think they were panic or went WTF when you called them. And Orange Mauritius sends letters in case you are in FUP mode or whatever. And I heard that they forget that they sent you the letter and so they don’t apply the FUP for you LOL! #fail
Well, during the day (To-day) my max download speed did not go beyond 20-30KB/s at around 9am. But now it seems to have become normal. i.e. around 100-120 KB/s
@yadhav–> I did not phone them. It was them who phoned me. And yes, they can’t stick to 1 version.
@jens—>My speed is still sucking. Max download speed is 20KB/s.
chanG met ADSL.. ADSL rare ena problem
Okay. Lets assume there is some repairs being done with the optical cables. It means your connection will get back to ‘normal’ in a few days.
My traffic usage for January is 4.12GB.
3.68GB down & 456MB up.
Yet my connection is slow all the time. I don’t believe that FUP BS.
Conclusion == Orange Mauritius’s network is crap (more users than available bandwidth).
When I told the Agent that my neighbour uses internet only for msn and facebook and still, her connection sucks. He told me “b ou voisin pa pou dire ou ki li faire lor internet”. So, Carrot, you’re still in the 5gb limit and your connection sucks. And I’m outside the 5gb and my connection sucks. Reason for me is I exceeded the FUP limit. I wonder what will be yours!
Tushal add the Competition Commission of Mauritius (CCM) to your list.
http://www.ccm.mu/Contact_us.php
We will see what they have to say
ey tushal sa bne customer care lor telephone bne bourik sa li jistoir limit pna sa myt in tirer,mo in ask n customer care officer dan telecom 1 mnth de cela,line dir me tat to speed pu fluctuate, wen to get myT , myT fer nta publiciT mai sa ki li pa p rod dir, li pa p kpv fourni internet tat y fair policy loyo, pren dimoun pu bete bne gg la:@
I got the FUP answer too.
Orange Mauritius, get your sh*t together.
Just because they have a monopoly on Internet Service, it doesn’t mean that they should make users suffer. This is outrageous. Bastards.
The Fair Usage Policy and ‘download cap’ are two different things. They don’t have the right to reduce your internet speed to zero no matter what!
@Josh–>I already emailed them asking for some details.
@Sawan—> there were times today when I didn’t had connection at all. Well, even when I had connection, it was epic slow.
@Saajid—>ICTA and the bunch of moron ministers are to be blamed too. Especially those who have a share in Nomad..
@Kavish–>LoL
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I am the only one who doesn’t mass download here and who doesn’t have issues with that stupid ISP?
Wooohooooooo! FUP FTW!
It guarantees that users like me are not penalized because of your mass downloading. But in any case, I dont find 5gb or 10gb an acceptable limit. Don’t curse me guys, but except from msn or facebook and blogging, I don’t use much internet at home.
Tushal, you should write a petition, and get it signed by hundreds or thousands… Not a petition of facebook sipa ki! Do something serious!!! Only then you can increase awareness and get support.
I am with you if you need help!
Good luck!
I`ve downloaded round 1.2 gb this month, yet the crap is only hitting 12kbps.
Well Orange Mauritius takes us for fool or whatever. Before taking the MyT package of 256kbbps i knew that it will be for unlimited usage. That was the reason for me of not going for ADSL. When the government imposed on these companies to reduce their tariffs, only one company did not abide to it and that was Orange. Instead of reducing it price they double the speed. That was the policy of the government and also part of the population who were thinking the tariffs would reduce. I heard there was some people who officially lodged case against them in court. That not our issue today. If orange is targeting for more clients then provision should be made not by “FAIR USAGE POLICY” but by other means. If Orange can not upgrade its product then being a multinational company it is sad to say they are not professionals. Orange is taking advantage of being a monopoly. It is to be noted that INTERNET TARIFFS IN MAURITIUS IS TOO HIGH AND WE ARE NOT BEING PROVIDED WITH THE REQUIRED SERVICE.
@Reetesh–>The only reason why Orange continues to do something like this is because Orange has the monopoly of internet in Mauritius(People, don’t talk about Nomad or Emtel. None of them are proper ISP). We need another ISP which can competes with Orange and forces Orange to either lose its customers or provide a decent service. But we all know that a new ISP won’t come to Mauritius any time soon.A new ISP will mean the death of Nomad.
@Joyshan—> Some friends called Orange and they were called that it is because of a technical issue that their connection is slow. But for me, an Orange agent phoned me to notify me that my connection is slow because I did 21gb. Oh how fair is it. People with 61 gb per month are not bothered by Orange. But I am. Why? Perhaps I complain too much when their service is crap and full of shit.
@yashvin–> Using only msn and facebook for 1 month can cross the 5gb limit. And imagine some one having a 1mb connection and doing only 10 gb per month. That dude must be epic moron or is a complete noob who uses internet only 30 mins per day! ! Concerning the petition thing, I’m seriously thinking about that. I contacted the Competition Commission of Mauritius to ask about some details. I’m hoping to hear from them soon. Already, there are hundreds of people on my facebook complaining about the slowness but if I phone Orange Customer Care, they will make as if I’m the only one with slow connection. They always do that. Most of the time, I prefer not to argue with them because its useless to argue with idiots!
I don’t think much can be done, unless you find a way to get somebody to invest millions in building another undersea optical wire system. The SAFE optical line we use for all international internet connections is saturated. Most of it isn’t even leased to us either, we share it with most other South African countries if I’m not mistaken.
In my eyes, Orange executives are nothing short of frauds. You don’t sell something (Bandwidth) you don’t have. Their horrible customer support service needs to be made known too. So yeah, screw them, and I’m 100% backing you.
@Yousuf—>Limited bandwidth? I heard something else. The opposite of what you said. But one thing for sure, their customer care sucks. If they don’t have an answer to your questions, they either disconnect the phone or reply in an aggressive tone. On very rare occasions, you will get some one who is really helpful!
Orange has always sucked, if its locally or abroad, they always get issues with customers, send incompetent technicians to troubleshoot you, their speed are always dropping for any reason and livebox are always getting problems after some years.
25 orange employees committed suicide in France. This shows the condition the company is; how crap they are.
Orange can’t do anything (for the moment) to remedy to those problems.
Let’s do as carrot said some weeks ago; burn orange tower!!!!
I’m sure we can get at LEAST 1000 angry people to walk down edith cavell street.
Bloggers should start doing a post about this topic and create a facebook riot against orange fanclub…
Don’t be little bashful girls, its the only way to show those rotten fruits that we are not satisfied for their expensive and sluggish internet speed.
FACE THE TRUTH.
Ouufff… mone fatiguer lire tou sa comments la… mercredi 1030pm… connection couper net… in call zot shit customer care, ine dir zot ine fini fer tou cki zot habitier dir fer… apres in raconte zot, zot mem zot tra la la ki zot habitier raconter 2008.. line bizin chup chaap ecouter et sel kitsoz line kpav dir c “nu pu fer kitsoz o plus vite possible”. Jeudi matin “mon ami, o plu vite possible pa encore arriver?” — ” nu pu envoye ene technician kot ou zordi” the technician turned out to be a “tech li chien”, he investigated for around 1hrs, and could not find the problem which equals no connectivity again. today… li mem coupe la ligne telephone la… movais bebet la! but now the got the internet connectivity. Mais la si, mo demande boug la, ki problem. Li dir moi ou pa pu compran, li tro technik, concernant bane cables, avant koner lekel pu ou, nu bizin check tou cable…hahaha
Dir moi ou mem ou pa kone source problem la…
Shit ISP, Nooby technicians and Crappy Service.! “That should be their marketing campaign for 2010
Well this sounds really really crazy and stupid. I cannot imagine how an ISP company can do something so unprofessional like this. Specially with the FUP ass shit thing, I’ve never heard about that before in my country.
Here its written “Broadband Unlimited” Which means you pay a certain fee like 20USD/PerMonth and you get a 1.5MB connection with Unlimited usage / Downloads.
Why dont you guys bring this matter to the Consumers Right and make the complain visible and Loud enough to be heard in the Ministry office? You are paying for nothing and they are taking your money without providing what they promised. This is Unlawful , So go Do something about it because its the money you worked hard for.
guess its coz of the weather..
ey wai mari problem sa… :/
10-a 3hr pan ggne net kot mwa… and dpi 3-4 zour li lent kumadir ***********!
pFFFF
@Khushi–>What is the relation between the weather and myt?
@Afzal—> ek orange customer care dire ki am the only one with slowness issues..bunch of liars they are!
@Dino–> But the internet in Mauritius sucks. There are Orange, Emtel, Nomad and mtml as ISP. But the most “powerful” ISP is orange. It has a kind of monopoly in the internet in Mauritius. So, we users are forced to use their internet. Had we have another good ISP, I would had surely ditched Orange.
Here it was unlimited. But recently, they put a fair usage policy(FUP) which is totally crap. A 512kbps connection has a FUP of 5gb only per month! A 1mbps connection has a 10gb FUP. And I do like 5 gb per day! ! ! Even the Ministers are sh!t.
Hey guys, Orange sucks, we all know that but it is useless to complain here by just writing a comment. Even if someone at Orange is reading this.. well I don’t think they care about customer satisfaction anyway.
Starting a petition would be a good beginning. Then doing more like creating a Facebook Page or Group to encourage people to sign this petition, a newspaper article, on radio… I think we should by all means fight for our rights as consumers.
My max down speed has always been 48KBps where it is supposed to be arround 64KBps. If my calculations are right, I have a 384kbps internet package instead of 512kbps. When I phoned them, they said “48kBps is alright” so there’s no problem!
We and the people of Reunion island are sharing the same SAFE cable and according the speedtest.net, their average down speed is 1.48 mbps. (http://speedtest.net/global.php). The question here is do they pay more than we do for internet or do they have better ISPs or do they have more priority than us? I’ve also noticed that those who are from the region of Port Louis have a better connection than those from Moka. (somebody should do a kinda survey on that). I’m not sure about the reliability of these numbers but if it is real, that would mean the problem comes from Orange’s system rather than on what you just said above. It is supposed to be equal for everyone. Because when you sign up, they don’t say 48KBps for the people of Moka and 60KBps for the people of Port Louis, for the same price and same package.
BTW, there’s a myth that those having an Orange ADSL 512 package (I’m not sure for myT users) are able to reset their FUP counter simply by restarting their modem. Have you tried it? Sorry for the off-topic part of this comment.
BTW, Orange is currently using Mauritius Telecom’s old network system (I think).