Orange in the Metro

Over the past year I have noticed that the Orange 2G and 3G network was getting slower and slower in the Paris metro, especially during rush hour. At some point it was almost unusable, with Opera Mini page load times exceeding 15 seconds. The strange thing was that it affected both the 2G and 3G network, so it's difficult to tell if this was due to an overload on the air interface or some other bottleneck in the system. Whatever it was, however, it has improved a lot lately. Opera Mini pages are now loading very quickly again and the e-mail client retrieves incoming messages in a flash. What ever you have done, dear Orange, it has worked. Or is it just that all the "Blackberries" are on vacation at the moment? Let's hope not…

5 thoughts on “Orange in the Metro”

  1. Actually Martin it was so bad at some point on the RER A that it seemed like Orange had decided to disable Edge/GPRS altogether in the tunnels during rush hours.
    The “E” on my iPhone would disappear as soon as it connected to one of the underground cells and would only come back after exiting the RER for the metro…
    Things have improved over the past few weeks but I am not entirely sure it is because of improvements on the network since I doubt they can upgrade the capacity of the cells very easily.

    By the way were have you seen Orange 3G network show up in the metro? Until now I have only it in the RER stations of Gare de Lyon and Châtelet les Halles.

  2. Never had any problem myself, but since I’m using a 3G R99 only capable phone (no HSDPA), I can’t really tell if it’s slow or not 🙂

  3. Hi David,

    yes, we should see how things behave in the coming days now with the “rentrée” 🙂

    The other place I saw 3G connectivity is Gare du Nord, but as you say in the RER underground section and not in the metro.

    Kind regards,
    Martin

    typepad@sixapart.com wrote:

  4. Hi David,

    yes, we should see how things behave in the coming days now with the “rentrée” 🙂

    The other place I saw 3G connectivity is Gare du Nord, but as you say in the RER underground section and not in the metro.

    Kind regards,
    Martin

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