Orange

Rumour mill: Orange/Nokia in talks over Comes with Music

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:04:13 -0400

Having been a fierce opponent in the past to Nokia's efforts to break into the mobile music arena, Orange has now admitted to ongoing negotiations with Nokia regarding the Comes with Music (CWM) service.

While no agreement is in place today, Orange admitted it was aware that Carphone Warehouse was currently selling CWM prepay and pay-monthly handsets with Orange Sims in their stores. A quick decision is expected given that Nokia used this weekend to launch a multi-million Euro pre-Christmas campaign to promote CWM using major TV channels and print media.

3UK already sells CWM on the Nokia N95 8GB with 300 minutes and texts for €45 per month, and would be the only operator to benefit from Nokia's marketing campaign--something that Nokia would want to avoid and Orange would wish to gain from.

But Nokia's chance of gaining Orange as a reseller of its music service looks likely to be disrupted following the agreement by EMI, Warner Music and indie label Beggars Group to launch their own service offering unlimited music downloads for €130. The new service, Datz Music Lounge, can be played on any mobile phone or portable music player. Like Nokia's offering, subscribers will be given access to it for a year and keep all the music they download.

For more on this story go to:
Brand Republic and Mobile Today

Related articles:
Operators shun Nokia's Comes With Music service. Comes with music story
Nokia reshapes mobile music. Editorial

Orange runs out of laptops, now offers free broadband deal

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:37:37 -0400

Mobile broadband would appear to be the technology of choice given that Orange, along with other mobile operators, has sold out of the laptops they are bundling with the deal.

Orange says the Asus and HP laptops should become available when new stock arrives next week, with new and upgraded models becoming available at the same time. The UK director of retail sales said she had been amazed at the demand for the service, which included a 3GB data allowance and 100 texts per month from the laptop.

Looking to further capitalise on this business opportunity, and to compete with BT's newly launched free mobile broadband offer, Orange is now also offering free mobile broadband access to small businesses who sign up for the company's Solo service.

Last week, France Telecom Orange said it was looking to sign a strategic agreement with HP early next year that would see Orange offering laptops with mobile broadband in certain countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

To add more flames to this fire, LG is expected to unveil its low-cost netbook next month, and there are widespread rumours that Apple will launch a netbook in the near future.

For more on this story:
- go to Mobile News and Tech Watch

Related articles:
Orange subsidizes HSDPA-embedded notebook from HP. Orange laptop story
Acer in talks with Europe's operators for 3G mini laptop. Acer story
Nokia and Intel notably absent from US$1bn mobile broadband push. Broadband story

Strong consumer demand for single source cellphone/laptop provider, says Orange

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:12:20 -0400

Along with many mobile operators, Orange is looking to dramatically ramp up its portfolio of laptops with embedded 3G SIMs. This shift towards providing WAN connectivity for portable computers is, according to Orange, being driven by consumer demand.

Business users and consumers are apparently wanting a single supplier of both cellphones and wireless laptops to overcome support problems and simplify billing issues.

Francois Mahieu, director of devices with Orange, has indicated that the company is considering offering the same level of customer care packages to those purchasing laptops as its cellphone subscribers already enjoy. "We want Orange to be a one-stop-shop for getting connected. We have found a huge appetite from customers who want to talk to a single provider, and we believe a greater number will be connected at the point of sale in future."

According to Orange, support remains the major difficulty for SMEs that need a single contact point for problem resolution, particularly with connectivity. Mahieu added that the company had also begun to get calls from enterprise customers looking for a similar level of support.

"In the future, all laptops will have some form of embedded wide-area network connectivity," said Mahieu, "but there is still some way to go before this can be achieved. We are at least two years away from everyone in a company being able to use a connected laptop."

For more on this story:
- go to the Pocket-Lint and Vnunet

Related articles:
T-Mobile joins 'free laptop' parade. T-Mobile story
Demand outstrips supply for free laptop offer. Laptop story

Blackberry Bold - not fit for purpose, claims Orange

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:56:22 -0400

While Vodafone UK continues to offer the device, Orange has withdrawn the Blackberry Bold over software quality issues. According to leaked documents, Orange claims the Bold is causing problems for a variety of mobile operators and the company has decided to suspend sales of the handset to protect its subscribers from irritating glitches.

Blackberry is said to be working on the problem and is expected to have shortly completed additional testing and validation to ensure future handsets do not encounter the problem. Insiders believe Blackberry introduced errors to the updated OS for the Bold, with reports that the 4.6 version of the OS is the reason for the problems Orange is experiencing. Orange believes this will take weeks rather than months to resolve the problem.

Interestingly, AT&T has delayed the release date of the Bold from early October to 'later this year'--although it currently lists the device as 'out of stock.'

For more on this story:
- go to Electric Pig and Softpedia

Related articles:
RIM: AT&T still testing BlackBerry Bold. RIM story
RIM begins rolling out new devices. RIM story

New laptop bundles announced by Orange - including unlimited downloads

Paul Rasmussen — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:40:49 -0400

As cell phone retailers bicker over who has the most attractive mobile broadband/laptop offer, Orange has trumped the opposition with a new proposition. The company has bundled a trio of HP Compaq laptops and USB HSDPA modems with broadband tariffs targeted to appeal to business users.

Key among these is 'unlimited' HSDPA usage - in reality a download limit of 5GB per month, although there are indications Orange will be lenient about applying this to valued subscribers.

The company would also argue its pricing effectively makes the HP Compaq laptops free. The bundles are based around the Compaq 6735s, 6730s and 6730b, with monthly subscriptions costing €42, €48 and €54 per month respectively. Contracts run for two years for a total expenditure of €1000, €1150 and €1300, again respectively. And, with the 6730b typically costing around €900 on its own, Orange might have a point.

To make sure that this offer catches the attention of business users, Orange has not only embedded the SIM card, but included 500 Wi-Fi minutes per month.

However, the company has failed to announce a launch date for these laptops - 'shortly' was all it was prepared to commit to.

For more on this story:
- go to Mobile Today and VNUnet

Related articles:
T-Mobile joins 'free laptop' parade. T-Mobile story
Vodafone signs with Lenovo for 3G laptop deal. Vodafone story

Orange ignores femtocells and launches 3G/Wi-Fi UMA service

Paul Rasmussen — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:36:39 -0400

Not wanting to wait for femtocells to become commercially viable has provoked Orange to announce its 3G/Wi-Fi UMA strategy. The company, which already has more than one million users of its 2G UMA service, claims its 3G UMA solution is a 'world first', initially using handsets from Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

Gareth Abel, the company's marketing operations director for Orange group handsets, said the decision to go with Wi-Fi was made some time ago specifically to accelerate Orange's convergence strategy. "However, we've been working very closely with Samsung, Sony Ericsson and the cell phone chipset vendors to make 3G work within UMA. The critical challenge was to make the handover of voice calls from 3G to Wi-Fi, and vice versa, a seamless switch. This was the main technical issue and we had a dedicated team to ensure this would work, but it was a complex challenge."

The 3G UMA service has been designed to work with the Orange Livebox access point with the objective of attracting users of the new handset to download music, TV content and videos. "It will be targeted at a younger audience, a segment that wants to consume a wide choice of multimedia," said Abel.

The company admitted it would continue to monitor the development of femtocell technology, but, more specifically, focus on its potential readiness for widescale deployment. "For the moment, there won't be an immediate switchover to femtocells, as there's been a lot of effort within Orange achieving the 3G UMA product that we're announcing," confirmed Abel.

Story source: FierceWireless Europe

Related articles:
Femtocells to overtake UMA, SIP solutions by 2013. Femtocell story
Kineto's UMA Client to be available for 3G Phones built with Qualcomm Chipsets. UMA client story
3GPP adds 3G support to UMA standard. 3GPP story

Orange targets business users with SIM-only offer

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:57:57 -0400

Orange claims it has a solution for businesses that are facing increasingly difficult times with its new SIM-only tariff. The idea is that businesses can look to reuse existing handsets by inserting an Orange SIM card without the need to sign up to a long term contract.

Orange believes its SIM-only deal provides a more easily understood and cheaper alternative to mobile subscriptions. At the cheapest end of the spectrum the €19-a-month SIM offers 300 free inclusive minutes and 50 texts, with international calling included as standard -- perhaps not much use to a hectic businessman.

Of more interest is the option where Orange is offering to let users share the same tariff. The "Sharer SIM" deal means subscribers simply share the tariff and its minutes and text allocations across multiple lines. This option starts at €75 per month and offers 1,000 inclusive minutes.

For more on this story:
- go to VNUnet and Mobile Europe

Related articles:
T-Mobile goes aggressive--mimics winners' tactics. SIM-only story
SIM marketing deal boosts O2 results. O2 SIM story

Vodafone plans very sticky mobile portal

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:46:42 -0400

Vodafone plans to enhance its mobile portal to make it a recognized point to call for cell phone subscribers. The company said it would look to integrate its fixed-line website more closely with its mobile portal Vodafone Live!, which features content and services from partners including the BBC, Facebook, Google and Sky.

"The current experience of Vodafone Live! will pale into insignificance against what we have planned and we'll replicate that online," said Vodafone's consumer business director, Ian Shepherd. "We're developing the mobile Internet fast and online in parallel with that. We want the website to be a place that's meaningful and useful so that customers bookmark it and come back to it regularly." He added the company was planning a series of online tools, such as the ability to manage contacts and media, as part of the revamp -- which is where recent Zyb acquisition might come in to play.

So far, Orange is the only European carrier to treat its website as anything other than a storefront, something Vodafone now wants to emulate, or surpass.

For more on this story:
- go to NMA

Related articles:
Vodafone Announces the Acquisition of ZYB. Zyb acquistion story
Vodafone debuts unlimited mobile web pricing plans. Pricing plan story

Cut your SMS prices--PLEASE, says French government

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:57:53 -0400

The French population is beginning to complain loudly about increasing inflation, claims the French consumer goods minister, who has reacted by asking the country's three main operators--Orange, SFR and Bouygues, to cut SMS prices that have only fallen slightly over the past four years.

The minister, Luc Chatel, has urged the three operators to be aware of the problem faced by French consumers, and has invited them to make an example by cutting the cost of text messages.

The national regulator, Arcep, has provided support to Chatel's call by stating that French consumers on pay-as-you-go phones pay an average cost of €0.12 per text. This price has remained nearly constant since 2004 while the volume of texts has doubled in this period. Of interest are the prices of SMS from France's MVNOs that cost around 25-30 per cent less than from the three main operators. This 'consumer-pleasing' initiative by Chatel comes only days after the EU announced a proposal to slash by roughly two thirds the cost of text messages for people travelling between EU countries.

For more on this story:
- go to MoCo News

Related stories:
EU to impose heavy cuts to SMS roaming charges. EU SMS story
GSMA Responds To EU Proposals To Regulate Roaming Costs For Text Messaging. GSMA story

Orange eyes Vietnam as potential growth vehicle

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:18:25 -0400

Having failed to gain an entry into new markets with the collapse of its bid for TeliaSonera, France Telecom (FT) mobile arm Orange has moved on and is evaluating the Vietnamese market, a country, it claims, with 'marvellous' growth potential. The company is looking to generate an extra 0.5 per cent revenue growth through medium-sized purchases in the coming years following the TeliaSonera failure, said FT's CEO, Didier Lombard. "With TeliaSonera, we tried to do it in one shot. As this wasn't possible, we'll do it slowly through smaller acquisitions. That way, our shareholders will accept it more easily.''

About seven companies in Asia and Europe, including Vodafone and operators in Russia and Asia, have expressed interest in buying shares of Vietnam's state-owned mobile operator, MobiFone. The Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications has said it will send invitation letters asking operators to bid for the 3G licences this month, with a response required within two months. Russia's second largest mobile phone operator, Vimpelcom, has already committed to invest around US$270 million in a JV with Vietnam's Global Telecommunications Corp. The new company, G-Tel Mobile, will start providing cell phone services in Vietnam next summer.

For more on this story:
- go to Telecom TV and This Day

Related stories:
France Telecom fails to win TeliaSonera, looks for smaller fish. FT story