Currently Orange Pay As You Go offers three different distinctive call-charge plans that you can select from according to when you like to use your mobile and for how long. The three plans on offer are named (fairly self-explanatorily) ‘Fixed Rates All Day’, ‘Choose Your Own Off-Peak’ (formerly known as Just Talk Original but more comparison between the old and the new later) and ‘Talk and Save’ (a reincarnation of Just Talk Plus).

So What Exactly are these ‘Fixed Rates All Day’ and Which Mobile Users Should Go For This Plan?

This is a plan in which calls, texts and WAP are charged at the same rate, regardless of the time of day or night, i.e. there is no off-peak period. This plan is for those who like to use their phone both during the day and at night and avoids the stress associated with making that essential (yet very very expensive) call that just can’t hang on until the off-peak period.

However this plan is not all good. The rates may be fixed, but they aren’t cheap: for example calls to landlines and other Orange mobiles for example are 20p per minute at all times (compare this to the 10p a minute you could be paying for these calls at off-peak times on ‘Choose Your Own Off-Peak’ or 5p a minute after the first 3 minutes on ‘Talk and Save’ and the 10p on weekday evenings and 5p at weekends offered by O2 Online Original and you can see that calls on this plan really do add up and unless you use your phone equally much at all times of day and night this isn’t the plan to go for). Calls to networks other than Orange are also 40p a minute, so if you call other networks a lot this plan might not be ideal.

Calls to the Answer Phone to listen to your messages etc are 10p per minute (this is the same on all Orange Pay as You Go Plans- O2 on the other hand are offering this for 10p per call from the 1st of October which may be a better choice if you get left lots of messages). Calls to the Orange WAP service are 10p per minute although Orange WAP is free until the end of September (my advice is to make the most of its features while you don’t have to pay- particular favourites of mine are to go on MSN Messenger through it and finding out train times- although WAP is a novelty and good for a bit of a mess about on while its free I think that its usage will plummet when the charges kick in. The only thing it would be useful for then is to find the nearest Orange E-Top Up Outlet- you’d need it after a quick WAP session!). Texts to the UK and from the UK to people that are abroad cost 12p- a common feature of all three Orange PAYG plans.

Maybe ‘Choose Your Own Off-Peak’ is More My Thing Then? Tell Me More…

‘Choose Your Own Off-Peak’ allows you to choose the time band during which you are likely to call people most and to get cheaper call rates at that time. For example, calls to landlines and other Orange mobiles cost 10p per minute during your off-peak time band rather than 35p per minute and 25p per minute respectively outside this; calls to other networks cost 25p off-peak compared to 50p at peak times. Answer Phone, texts and WAP are at the same rates as on the ‘Fixed Rates All Day’ plan. If you choose this plan, you will initially be given the Orange standard off-peak hours (your off-peak period will be 7pm to 7am). If you decide to choose an off-peak period other than this you will automatically be given the fixed off-peak hours of 11pm to 7am and you can choose between the following options to make up your 12 hours of off-peak time: Morning Off- Peak (7am-11am), Lunchtime Off-Peak (11am-3pm) or Afternoon Off-Peak (3pm-7pm)- choose wisely! Weekend calls are classed as off-peak.

‘But I can talk for England...’

Maybe ‘Talk and Save’ is for you then. On this plan calls to landlines and other Orange mobiles are 25p per minute for the first three minutes you spend calling these every day, then 5p per minute after the first three minutes. This is good for those who can’t stop nattering, but not that good, for example O2 Online Talkalot offers 25p per minute for the first 3 minutes of calls per day to landlines and O2 mobiles then 5p per minute for the rest of the day during the week or 2p per minute for the rest of the day at weekends, which is a better deal. Also, calling other networks is expensive on this plan: 40p per minute at all times. If you are a WAPoholic though this plan will provide the best Orange Pay as You Go WAP rates once October begins (1Op per minute weekdays and 5p per minute at weekends). Calling the Answer Phone and sending texts is once more charged at the same rates as on ‘Fixed Rates All Day’.

How Do I Top-Up My Credit?

There are lots of ways of doing this. Firstly, 24hr a day, 365 day a year top up is available using your credit or debit card although you can’t top up using the card until up to 72 hours after you register the card so get prepared. Call 450 from your Orange mobile, select the appropriate option and follow the prompts to register your card. Also, if you have an Abbey National Cash Machine card you can increase your airtime balance at Abbey Nation cash machines. You can also use an Orange Top-Up Swipe card to top-up a minimum of £5 at participating retailers (from which you can also pick up leaflets containing the swipe cards): look out for the green-bordered top-up sign accompanied by the Orange logo. You can also buy vouchers from quite a lot of shops, but these are only available in £20 or £50 increments so are less suitable for those with cash-flow problems or who spend very little on their mobiles than other top-up methods.

I Have Already Selected and Have Been Using A Particular Orange Pay As You Go Plan; Can I Now Switch To A Different One? Can I Change My Off-Peak Time Band? How Frequently Can I Do This?

You can change between Pay As You Go plans once every 30 days. So if you select (by calling 450) ‘Talk and Save’ tonight for example and then change your mind and think that it isn’t the best option for you and you’d rather be on ‘Fixed Rates All Day’ you’ll have to stick ‘Talk and Save’ out for a month before you can change to one of the other two options. Similarly, if you change off-peak time band on ‘Choose Your Own Off-Peak’ it will be a month before you can change it again.

What Advantages Are There That Are Common To All Orange Pay As You Go Plans?

If you top-up by £50 or more you will get 10% extra free talk time. You also get free talk time when you register (I think I got £5 but that was quite a while ago) and a 15% discount on a phone upgrade after 24 months with Orange PAYG. Billing is carried out per second and you can use your phone abroad immediately after buying it (the world is divided up into zones by Orange and calls whilst abroad are generally very very expensive, the Orange website gives more details about this according to your service plan). As I mentioned before there is free WAP till the end of September. You can also choose to add ‘Group Saver’ or ‘Text Saver’ (formerly Orange Out Here) to your PAYG package for £19.99 a year in order to save money on calls to particular people or on texts. See my opinion on ‘Orange Out Here’ for more details about ‘Text Saver’.

What Is Orange’s Coverage and Reception Like?

In general I have found the signal coverage and reception to be quite good. Living in a mountainous region I would expect there to be dodgy no-signal areas, which there are, but they are few and far between (unlike Virgin with whom I don’t even get a signal in my house!). I got my phone as a present on Orange mainly because their coverage (particularly in our local area) was apparently the best of all the networks at the time when my phone was bought (about a year and a half ago), although progress has been made in leaps and bounds by all networks since then so I wouldn’t say that this was necessarily the case now (O2 seems to have better reception where I live from my modest trials).

So What Was ‘Just Talk’ And How Did It Compare To The New Orange Pay As You Go Plans?

‘Just Talk’ was the name encompassing the two Orange Pay as You Go tariff plans that existed when my phone was new: ‘Just Talk Original’ (similar to the new ‘Choose Your Own Off-Peak’ plan) and ‘Just Talk Plus’ (similar to the new ‘Talk and Save’ plan). The main notable difference in comparison to nowadays (in addition to considerable price hikes in all areas) is that with ‘Just Talk Original’ I used to get much cheaper calls and text messages for only 5p each when I bought a £50 voucher. This was a fantastic money saver. Also, until very recently, text messages on Orange used to be 10p each (other than with a £50 voucher). Now Orange Pay as You Go has very little that makes it stand out, texts are at the standard rate, call charges are relatively high, WAP has to be paid for…

…which is why I only use Orange nowadays for my free ‘Out Here’ text messages (I get 5 a day…see my ‘Orange Out Here’ opinion for more details). I, like many of my friends and countless others I am sure, have now changed to the O2 Online Original Pay as You Go Package (I paid £9.99 for the SIM card from their website after unlocking my phone from Orange), on which I get 300 free text messages a month and 300 free WAP minutes a month, provided that I’m in credit and top up by at least £10 a month. So don’t Just Talk about it…change to a plan which suits you!

(The categories below do not really apply, but I'll fill them in anyway as best I can with respect to Orange Just Talk).