Orange Broadband and Spotify not working

awidgery

Very odd problem I'm having:

I signed up for Orange Broadband (about 3 months ago) and it has generally been OK.
However, I have started to use Spotify (online music streaming service) regularly and it appears that there is some form of traffic shaping/blocking being applied to it in the evenings.

The symptoms are that tracks will take a long time (minutes) to begin playing and then will stutter and stop.

This happens both on a Windows 7 laptop, a Macbook Pro, and an iPhone on Wifi. It also happens when the laptops are wired up with ethernet.

If I turn wifi off and use the 3G network on my iPhone - Spotify works fine. It even works on the laptop if I tether the iPhone to the laptop.
But using the wifi it fails to work.

I have verified the performance of my connection, with >10mbps download and >1mbps upload on Speedtest.net, and low latency (~40ms). Other streaming services (YouTube, iPlayer etc) work flawlessly.

Given that it only happens in the evenings I can only assume it's some sort of traffic shaping. Is this Spotify being P2P?!

I have tried contacting Orange but got the usual script-readers in India.

Anyone had anything similar?

PaulHaliday

I have exactly the same problem, but I think I know why.

Recently Orange signed a deal with Deezer, who are a French music streaming service.

I have a hunch that they are now trying to knobble Spotify users so that they may look towards signing up for Deezer instead.

Don't know about the legality of such practices, personally, I think it's anti-competitive.

I'd hope this falls under the remit of OFCOM to investigate. Going to make some enquiries.

Regards,

Paul Haliday

dolphinesian

I'm getting exactly the same problem but it's a very recent thing. I've been using spotify for months with no problems. At the moment I can only download using 3G on my iPhone which will cost me.

Orange have also recently put my wife's mobile contract rate up inside the contract fixed length term.

This is certainly one way to haemorrhage customers!

dolphinesian

I've had this problem for a few days. I have just phoned Orange to complain and miraculously it's working fine now. They Indian guy on the phone claimed he'd never heard of Spotify. He asked if he could call me back so I hung up, about 1 min later he called back and started asking if he could control my PC. I said I didn't have one. Whilst on the phone to him I tried the connection again and it worked, searches and streaming all fine.

littlesheepy

I'm having problems like this with orange at the moment too. I can download a stream pretty quick in the day without any problems. In the evenings, in the last month or so, it's started going so unbelievably slow. For downloads, I'm getting 1 or 2kbps instead of 600kbps. I'm getting rather miffed by it, as I've been with orange fr absolutely donkeys, without any problems at all. Thinking about giving them a call to see if they're capping it or something? Anybody got any ideas why it's happening all of a sudden?

uncleringo

Same problem here. I have 2 broadband connections at home, one for running websites and one for using my sonos with spotify. Literally the only reason I need the orange connection is for spotify but 75% of the time it doesn't work at all. When I switch my laptop to use the other provider spotify works just fine.

I called orange to complain. They said they would upgrade my connection at the exchange which should solve the problem. It didn't. And the 'technician' that called me back claimed to never have heard of Spotify. Hmm, suspicious.

After no improvement I called to cancel the contract and was told I could try their better £20 odd quid a month service for a few days to see if it improved. If anything it's worse. I've not been able to get spotify to work at all so I have finally cancelled. Although when I told the guy at orange that someone said I could try the upgrade for 5 days and cancel if there was no improvement he put me on hold and then came back with 'I don't know why he would have told you that'. He seemed to change his tune a minute later and offered me the MAC code.

Great service Orange! Now you've lost me as both a mobile and broadband customer. Try using orange on 3G around london. It simply doesn't work. You get answerphone messages whilst having full signal and you can't make calls half the time. Oh and mobile internet is a joke.

I turned to three 6 months ago and it all works like a dream.

hunterms

I have had exactly the same problem as you guys.

Been an orange customer for the last 6 years or so and using spotify for around 2 years now - no problems at all

Spotify has been getting really slow at connecting over the last 4-5 weeks and now wont connect at all. :mad:

I uninstalled spotify and then reinstalled it - still no joy

Then i found your posts. I have phoned orange and told them - fix it or i will cancel my broadband and phone contracts

The chap in india claimed not to know what spotify was but said he will look into my problem and do his best to rectify it.

I told him orange have 7 days to fix it - will let you know what happens


My account works without a problem at work - just not through my home broadband

I am livid about this as it stinks - especially with the deezer deal

D

jayme1

sounds like orange is severely limiting P2P connections, which is what spotify uses to deliver the songs, I would say it is very poor play by orange, I would guess the only thing you could do is ask orange to remove the stupid P2P block, as you are using it for 100% legitimate reasons they shouldn't even be blocking it.

hunterms

Spotify still not working for me - anybody else on orange manage to get this sorted out?

flynn70

If your looking for a list of complainers I'd like to add my name.
I work from home and subscribe to Spotify.
No problem throughout the day but come 7pm plus it just packs up.
Interested to know if it is Orange pulling the plug on it.
If so, goodbye Orange.

Just as an update - tried Deezer (owned by Orange as far as I'm aware) works a treat!
I don't like to be told / forced into making choices, Orange I'm OUT.

littlesheepy

I rang customer support to say i had a problem with my internet and mentioned that it seemed like the bandwidth was be controlled and go the 'oh no, no, no, we don't do that' and with about 20 seconds had decided it was a microfilter that was old and no longer good enough and they'd send me a new one. Why this should be a problem at night but not in the day?! So i've swapped the microfilter so they can't say i've not done what they asked. Just need to test the connection one evening again although i have no hope whatsoever of if being fixed. Really sad as i've been with orange for a long long time and never really had a problem before and now i've updated my contract in August means i'm going to be stuck with them for 12 months if it's not corrected