Pepephone ADSL in Spain: €28 a month and an unlocked router to leave Orange

Pepephone ADSL: €28 a month and an unlocked router to leave Orange

The switch was completed in under 24 hours. A call to Pepephone one day, confirmation from Orange two hours later and, the next morning, the line cut off and the configuration details in the inbox. The result: 10 megas down and 1 up for €28 a month, compared with the €50 the previous package cost, landline included. Annual savings exceed €260. And the router, an Orange Livebox 2, was unlocked to work with any provider.

The detail is no small matter. In Spain, naked ADSL — without a voice line — remains an administrative rarity. Most providers hide it or penalise it. Anyone brave enough to ask for it faces a €42.35 installation fee including VAT and the uncertainty of whether the outgoing provider will claim back the modem. The most common answer: call and ask.

How much do you save switching from Orange to Pepephone ADSL?

The maths is simple. €50 a month with Orange versus €28 with Pepephone. The annual difference is around €264. On top of that comes dropping the landline, a service many users admit they never use: "that's what the mobile is for", as the author of the original post puts it. The line rental, that item that appears on every bill, disappears from the receipt.

The switch, moreover, was quick. Orange took just two hours to call and confirm the cancellation. That kind of efficiency is unusual. In the same period, another customer recounts three months of problems with Orange: a switch never executed, two landlines and ADSL billed at the same time, a tariff change without notice and wrongful charges. The difference in treatment is the argument repeated most often.

The router is another chapter. Orange's Livebox 2 can be unlocked to work with any provider. The process is not trivial, but not impossible either: download the firmware, decrypt it — the algorithm is an XOR with FF, according to a technical detail shared in the thread — and extract the credentials. Anyone who manages it saves buying a new router. Those who don't have alternatives: the TP-LINK TD-W8960N for €35 plus €6 shipping comes up as the most recommended option, with ADSL 2+, Annex M and wifi N.

Is Pepephone's ADSL unstable?

The question runs throughout the conversation. The answers vary. Some report occasional one-minute outages attributable to the day of the line change. Some suffered an outage of more than 24 hours that required a technician's visit. And one user, after almost a year, sums it up: "runs like clockwork".

The pattern that emerges is that of borrowed infrastructure. Pepephone has no network of its own; it rents Telefónica's. When something breaks, the technician who shows up at your door may be from Vodafone, as one user recounts after receiving a €66 bill — with an asterisk — that Pepephone said it would not pay. The line, in the end, was fixed. The scare, too.

Latency, for online gaming, stays the same as with Orange. YouTube, oddly enough, works better. The author attributes it to traffic-shaping practices by the outgoing provider: "I always said it wasn't normal how slow YouTube was with Orange".

The landline: can you keep it without paying for a line?

This is where VoIP comes in. Several participants have ported their landline number to independent providers. Netelip comes up as the most frequently mentioned option, with number porting, a PBX and preconfigured hardware. Another service, FreeVoipDeal, offers calls at €0.012 per minute, compared with JustVoip's €0.07. According to the testimonials, quality is good: a slight one-second delay when the call starts, nothing more.

The obstacle is technical. The router Pepephone provides by default has no VoIP. To use a service like Netelip you need an adapter or an IP phone. The question left unanswered: can you port your landline to a VoIP provider and take the ADSL separately with Pepephone? The most plausible answer is yes, but nobody confirms it for sure.

The fine print: installation, contract terms and returning the router

The entry cost is €42.35 including VAT. That's the installation. There is no minimum contract term. The monthly bill, according to a customer of almost a year, is €23.60 — the promotional first-year rate — charged between the 6th and the 10th of each month. Annual savings in that case are estimated at €228.

Returning the previous provider's modem is a lottery. Jazztel, after more than two years, rarely asks for it back. Neither does Orange, based on the author's experience. But it's worth calling to confirm. The alternative is an unexpected charge months later.

The thread leaves a bittersweet aftertaste. The experience with Pepephone is good, the price is unbeatable, the service is fair. But the dependence on Telefónica's network and the lack of native VoIP on the standard router are real limitations. Meanwhile, the competition is moving: an Amena offer at €28 with ADSL, national calls and 1,000 minutes to mobiles is mentioned in the latest posts. The board is changing. The question is whether Pepephone will make its move.