I signed up with Orange just over a year ago on a 24-month contract on Dolphin 40. My phone is HTC Hero, which just recently got Android update after months of waiting.

There haven't been any major issuesm however the signal fairly often drops when I'm at work and my kitchen and it's a pain in the neck. I've read that I should be downgrade my contract as I've been with them for over half of my contract.

£40 is a lot when I hardly use it but the downgrade would only be by a plan to £30 a month is that correct?

If I wanted to cancel my contract and sign up with someone else (been looking at Vodafone) would they contribute towards payingthat. It'll be £400 to buy out my contract at the original £40/month. I've also been looking at some sim free phones and maybe going down that route....

So I would just like some thoughts/advice before I phone Orange and ask if anyone has had a bad/good experience with this kind of thing would be great to know.

If you've got 12 months left on your contract, Orange would make you pay for the remaining 12 months

However, the signal issues that you've had, have you reported them to Orange as if there's a history of signal issues on your account then you could possibly get out of your contact, but if the signal is dropping here and there, then Orange would say that they don't guarantee signal and could be down to weather

Vodafone won't buy you out of your contract, i've seen Phones 4 u offering to buy contracts out to take on new customers, however phones4u I wouldn't trust with a bargepole

Have you tried a T Mobile signal as they are now partnered with Orange and you can arrange for your phone to work with both?

Good advice

Go to www.orange.co.uk/share and sign up to 'roam' onto T-Mobile (for no extra charges)

Might cure your problem!

Thanks for the replies guys. With the T-Mobile thing have signed up for that to be honest the signal where I live is rubbish. I was with before switching to Orange.

I actually bought my HTC from Phones4U and haven't had any problems with them to be honest. I'll phone them and downgrade my contract guess I'm stuck with it.

I think next phone will be sim free and I'll stick to sim only deals.

Have you tried using another Phone it could be the phone itself is faulty. If not report the signal issues to Orange i have seen them sort things like this!

Thanks for the reply. It doesn't do it all the time at work never worked in my kitchen but neither did my old phone as its downstairs from the lounge.

Downgraded £15/m + £5/m for 500MB data but have to pay for phone calls which is fine cos I never use I'm a texter, so managed to half my bill happy with that.