I spend a lot of time out of the office, and wanted to be able to establish a VPN with my mobile. I knew that Orange did support this, so bought a Sony Ericsson with a monthly contract. I went with Orange because of previous good service as a private customer, and the business deal they offered was one of the best.

I obviously had trouble getting VPN to work, and finally spoke to technical support, who informed me that VPN didn't work with GPRS. This suprised me at the time, but I took their word for it. Until I discovered a colleague was able to establish a VPN over GPRS using O2 with the same handset. I googled, and stubled over this discussion, specifically Guy's initial posting.

I contacted Orange today, and having been shuffled around support teams, was finally told to dial 158 on my handset. At least someone was then able to answer my query - Orange does support VPN over GPRS, but it is only for corporate customers, and requires a significant investment in customer premesis equipment. By significant I mean in the order of £1,000's.

It seems that the attitude of Orange is that VPN is solely a corporate business tool. It is not.

I asked everyone I spoke to today why they didn't support VPN over GPRS when O2 and other operators did. All seemed suprised at this, and nobody would comment. Personally, I think that Orange hasn't a clue about who their customer base is.