Howdy peeps,

I'm probably about to migrate from Orange ADSL to someone else, but part of the package with Orange was that they migrated the ownership of the phone contract to (I think) a Spanish subsidiary of French Telecom, so I've been paying my line rental to Orange directly, not BT. This isn't on an unbundled exchange or anything, so nothing physical has been done (AFAIK) but if i'm coming back to a different ISP then they will have to have a totally normal BT line. Am I about to be clobbered by nasties in geting a normal rip off line back with BT?

Again, it's not an unbundled exchange, and I don't really understand what Orange actually did, but I've not had a BT bill for over year now. It's not like the horror stories I've heard about Tiscali "kindly" cutting your copper over to their kit without asking you and then having to fork out for OpenReach to shift if back in the future.

Thanks muchly so

Chris

Your line was made WLR (wholesale line rental) with Orange so you pay line rental to your service provider, you are still connected to 'BT' dialtone and your calls probably are routed over BT wholesales network etc but Orange pay BT ,you pay Orange.
Your potential problem may be how to avoid being without broadband/dialtone for very long and ensure you dont have to pay another installation fee.
If you ask for a MAC this will only apply to your BB and Orange may not allow other ISP's to connect to their WLR line, so by asking for a MAC and leaving Orange broadband service, by default your 'Orange' line may be ceased .
If you tell Orange you are moving both telephone and broadband to another provider they may ask you when you want this to happen, you could then call another Service Provider and ask for them to 'start/takeover' your line, doing this should avoid another install fee, but you may have a 'tag' on the line for BB so it may take a while before another ISP can provide you with broadband.
I would call your current provider and ask whats the best way to proceed.