I used to believe so, apart from one incident many moons ago when I bought a phone in an Orange shop and the manager wouldn’t let me take it away as it needed a new SIM, I nearly exploded as I needed the roaming functionality that weekend on my shiny new phone! I finished my complaint letter with:

The future may be bright, but it will be brighter without Orange!

Things improved for a while, but just recently they seem to be going backwards, rumours that it’s since France Telecom took over could well be true I suppose!

The latest in their immensely odd strategies (in a week where Vodafone has announced free data on all tariffs) is the charging for “Orange Messenger” when they purposely remove Windows Messenger from all their devices. Of course you can go and install the CAB for Windows Messenger but many people are questioning whether they’ll be charged for using that as well (are Orange port monitoring!).

I’m off to investigate T-Mobile.