Orange takes advantage of the launch of Livebox 6 to increase the theoretical maximum throughput of its cheapest offer. It goes from 400 Mbit/s to 500 Mbit/s, without a price increase.
Orange has been marketing since April 7 its new Livebox Max offer at 55 euros per month, with the new Livebox 6† The operator is taking advantage of the launch of this new premium formula to adapt its other offers to make them more coherent.
These changes come with a nice surprise for millions of subscribers. The “Livebox Fiber” offer, the cheapest from Orange (excluding Sosh), now offers a symmetrical speed of 500 Mbit/s, compared to 400 Mbit/s before.
What does this change mean?
What does this daily increase mean? Theoretically (we stick to the theoretical) 500 Mbit/s means that you can download a file with a maximum speed of 62.5 Mbit/s, compared to 50 Mbit/s with 400 Mbit/s. Let’s still take the example of the movie in theory don’t look up on Netflix which, in HD, weighs 1.66 GB.
to admit, theoretical, that you take advantage of the maximum speed (connected by wire) and that the Netflix servers are in good condition, you can download the movie in 26 seconds and 30 hundredths on your smartphone, compared to 33 seconds with your previous connection . It’s a small change, but nice for really big downloads (like a video game). Of course you don’t really run at 500 Mbit/s. But if you go from 380 Mbit/s to 460 Mbit/s, there is still improvement (you can measure your connection speed to see if you’re above 400 Mbit/s if you want).
How do you explain that Orange unblocks a speed so easily? This limitation is not technical, but commercial. Technically, your Fiber installation can be much higher. But to sell you the most expensive offers, Orange segments its formulas.
Orange’s four Fiber offers
With this change, Orange segments are fiber optic offer in four levels:
- The Sosh box: 300 Mbit/s downlink, 300 Mbit/s uplink, with Livebox 5 and without TV decoder.
- Livebox fiber: 500 Mbit/s downlink, 500 Mbit/s uplink, with the Livebox 5 and a TV decoder.
- Livebox Up Fiber: 2 Gbit/s downlink, 600 Mbit/s uplink, with the Livebox 5 and two TV decoders.
- Livebox Max Fiber: 2 Gbit/s down, 800 Mbit/s up, with the Livebox 6 (!) and two TV decoders.
While the cheapest Orange offers still offer much less speed than competitors (at a price equal to the Livebox offer, Bouygues offers 1 Gbit/s and 5 Gbit/s for free), Orange emphasizes the quality of its network . The speeds promised by its competitors are rarely achieved, while the 500 Mbit/s of its Fiber offer should be achieved in most cases. In short, if you are already an Orange subscriber, you can welcome this news positively. We recommend that you restart your Livebox to take full advantage of it.
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