Orange

Orange heads for iPhone goldmine (maybe)

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:56:31 -0500

With Orange now selling iPhones in the UK, analysts have forecast that the company will have more than one million customers using the Apple device by the end of next year. If this occurs, the market research firm Mediacells claims that Orange could gain £750,000,000 in revenues from these subscribers.

This huge revenue boost, according to Mediacells, will be driven by Orange's iPhone ARPUs being nearly 30 per cent more (£10 per month) than non-iPhone users.

However, the £750 million in additional income does not account for the cost of purchasing the devices from Apple. Mediacells estimates that the cost to Orange for each iPhone will be around £250 per device, leading to Orange still generating more than £500 million of revenue from selling the iPhone on its network in the UK.

Mediacells' chief executive, Brad Rees, said: "Selling the iPhone remains the best way for operators to get customers to part with more cash, even in a recession. The fact that Orange has not undercut O2's tariffs with its own iPhone offering just goes to demonstrate Orange's confidence that it can generate new customers and reduce churn through selling the iPhone."

But this forecast, which might look wildly optimistic to some, is already under pressure given that one of Europe's largest supermarkets, Tesco, has agreed with O2 to resell the iPhone as part of its MVNO deal. Tesco, known for undercutting rivals on price, is being positioned by market watchers to be the first to open a price war with Orange and Vodafone (when it eventually has access to the handset) that will bring carnage to what has been a ‘steady state' retail price environment since the launch of the iPhone.

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Mobile News

Swiss networks to merge; France Telecom become majority owner

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:41:19 -0500

The agreement to merge the Swiss-based operators Orange and Sunrise has given fresh momentum to the consolidation of Europe's telecoms sector. The companies, respectively owned by France Telecom (FT) and Denmark's TDC, will see FT paying €1.5 billion to TDC to gain a 75 per cent ownership of the new company.

Analysts believe that the merged firm - with around 3.4 million customers and a market share approach 40 per cent, should be able to offer stronger competition to Swisscom, the state-controlled market leader. Also, significant Capex and Opex savings look possible by reducing the number of planned antenna sites by around a third. Estimates provided by FT indicate that Opex savings could reach an annual run-rate of €132 million, with Capex savings of €376 million expected between 2010 and 2015.

Gervais Pellissier, FT's deputy chief executive, said, "Following the UK joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile, FT completes another major in-market consolidation, consistent with our M&A policy". Jesper Ovesen, CFO of TDC, said the deal "is a natural last step towards TDC focusing on the Nordic markets, which is our strategic goal".

Neither executive made reference to job redundancies, but there is significant overlap between Orange's and Sunrise's operations in Switzerland.

For more on this story:
Financial Times

Swiss operators consider sharing LTE network

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:59:02 -0400

The likely cost of deploying LTE networks has prompted two mobile operators in Switzerland to consider sharing the required Capex and access. The CEO of Sunrise, the country's second largest operator with over two million subscribers, has approached Switzerland's third and smallest operator, Orange, which has commented that such cooperation is ‘conceivable'.

According to Sunrise, the aim of the cooperation between the two smaller networks (Swisscom is the largest with 5.5 million customers) would be to reduce overall Capex on the network deployment. It has been estimated by ComCom, the Swiss telecoms regulator, that the network upgrade costs would amount to between 2 to 3 billion Swiss Francs (US$1.8 billion-US$2.7 billion).

The president of ComCom, Marc Furrer, said that he would be willing to facilitate cooperation between Sunrise and Orange, not only for future networks but also for merging their current mobile networks.

However, while supporting the idea of Sunrise and Orange sharing networks, ComCom has indicated that Swisscom would be expected to upgrade its network on its own.

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Telegeography

Moldovan operator goes for high definition voice

Ian Channing — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:37:32 -0400

In pursuit of its high definition (HD) voice strategy, Orange has upgraded the voice sound quality on its Moldovan network to support the WB-AMR codex. This step follows the launch of a high-definition voice service for VoIP calls in 2006.

Over 500,000 Livephone devices have already been sold in France and the range will be extended to Orange operators in other countries over the coming months. The first mobile phone with high-definition voice capability that will be launched by Orange Moldova is the Nokia 6720c.

Orange plans to quickly extend the range of HD voice-compatible mobile handsets across Europe. It will be introducing HD voice services to the UK and Belgium markets by the end of 2010 and believes that these handsets will represent the majority of the 3G handsets sold within five years. Orange will also continue its plans to roll out HD VoIP in other European markets such as Poland and Spain.

For more on this story go to Cellular News

VIDEO: T-Mobile, Orange execs explain why companies are merging UK operations

Jim O'Neill — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:08:51 -0400

Source: The Journal

New French 3G licence gets ugly - operators complain to EU

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:50:55 -0400

Vivendi has joined the list of French mobile operators planning to lodge a formal complaint with the EU over the €240 million price tag set by the French government for the country's fourth 3G licence.

Having paid €619 million for the original 3G licences, the existing operators believe the new pricing is effectively providing state aid to the fourth operator relative to the other three licence holders. Martin Bouygues, the CEO of Bouygues Telecom--France's third-largest mobile phone operator--said that "we would consider it normal that we should receive a repayment," if the sale goes through on this basis.

The chairman of SFR's parent company, Vivendi, Jean-Bernard Levy, said that after paying €619 million for their licences, existing network operators (Orange, SFR and Bouygues) feel they have been subjected to unfair treatment as the government is now selling spectrum at below market value. "Does France really need a fourth operator while several other countries are moving from four to three? It has just happened in Australia, is imminent in Spain and the UK and may take place in the US."

The deadline for applications for the licence is set for Oct. 29, with the licence to be awarded around eight months later.

Likely bidders for the new 3G licence include the ISP operator Illiad, MVNO Kertel, cable operator Numericable and Egypt's Orascom Telecom. Orascom has indicated that it wants to expand its operations into France and has said it is ready to "ally itself with one of the candidates."

This stance has also been proposed by Bollore Telecom, claiming that it would be unreasonable to start trying to acquire the fourth licence alone. "If people want us to join them, we'll study the possibility, but that's not the case for the moment," said CEO Vincent Bollore. The company has also clarified its position regarding its 20 WiMAX licences--which it no longer wishes to sell--but instead offer the 3.5GHz spectrum as backhaul capacity to mobile operators.

For more on this story:
Telecom Paper and Total Telecom

French WiMAX licensee looks for operator partner

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:18:08 -0400

Having paid nearly €100 million for 20 regional WiMAX licences in France, Bolloré Telecom is now hoping to strike a partnership deal with Orange and SFR. The company, which is significantly behind schedule with its commercial WiMAX deployments, hopes it can generate revenues by partnering with the cell phone service providers looking to boost their data backhaul capabilities.

Local observers believe Bolloré Telecom needs to urgently boost its income and would be willing to form a joint venture with either Orange or SFR. This could see the mobile operator having access to Bolloré Telecom's WiMAX licences in return for access to the operator's customer base. However, an easier alternative would be for Bolloré Telecom to simply hand over its frequencies to either operator. How the French telecoms regulator might view such a transaction is not clear.

While WIMAX is slowly finding a home in Europe, its likelihood of ever being a significant force in mobile is fast diminishing with LTE deployment on the horizon. So, Bolloré Telecom's attempt to partner with a cellular operator to provide it with a high-speed wireless backhaul solution might be its best, and only, option.

For more on this story:
Total Telecom

Social Networks: Orange, Vodafone up the pace

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:22:12 -0400

The impact of social networking on mobile data traffic has triggered Orange and Vodafone to revamp their strategies in an effort to attract higher usage. While Vodafone's plans remain at the ‘well-sourced rumour' level, Orange has taken the lead by announcing Social Life, a social networking aggregation tool, that brings together activity on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo in one central interface, accessible via the Orange World portal.

According to Orange, the new platform allows users to upload photos, update their status, keep track of friends' status updates, etc., as well as sending and receiving messages. Social Life also claims to have SMS capabilities, allowing users to send and receive updates by text.

This move into becoming a consolidator makes more sense after Orange revealed that the number of monthly unique users to social networking sites jumped 48 per cent quarter-on-quarter to 946,564 in the three months to the end of February. Monthly page impressions climbed 129 per cent, with the average number of social networking pages per user per month hitting 397, indicating some heavy usage.

Orange said it will look to incorporate more social networks throughout the year.

Meanwhile, industry sources claim that Vodafone is preparing to launch its own social networking and aggregation platform, understood to be called Vodafone People.

The platform, which bears a striking resemblance to Zyb, the mobile phone utility and social networking site that Vodafone bought last year for €31.5 million, would appear to directly attack the INQ Mobile service offered by 3 by syncing contacts on multiple devices and details with Facebook.

However, Zyb is a little different from the MySpaces and Facebooks of the social networking world in that its focus is on enabling users to back-up and share their handset's calendar, messages, contact information and the like online. Vodafone People is also expected to allow integration with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Bebo and GTalk.

This interest in providing much improved access to social networking sites would appear to be added evidence that Orange and Vodafone are determined to increase the value of their proposition by offering their own services - a critical acceptance as voice and data tariffs continue to fall.

For more on this story:
Mobile Today and Tech Crunch

Orange to protest pricing of new French 3G licence

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:44:11 -0400

France Telecom Orange plans to lodge a complaint with the EU over its annoyance that the French government plans to offer a fourth 3G licence for around a third of the amount which it had to pay in 2001. The company said that it would strongly contest the licence fee of €240 million, claiming that the French government was effectively providing state aid to the fourth operator compared to the other three holders of 3G licences.

Regardless of this truculent approach, the French telecoms regulator, Arcep, said that the deadline for applications would remain set at 29^th October 2009, with the licence being awarded around eight months afterwards.

Arcep said that it would judge the applications based upon nine criteria, but with prominence placed upon the bidder providing 3G coverage for 25 per cent of the population after two years and 80 per cent after eight. The winner will also be measured on its business plan and the ability to support a full network rollout, estimated to require a capex of €1 billion.

Iliad, the parent company of French ISP Free, has confirmed that it would be a candidate for the licence, albeit that a previous bid for the licence by the company was rejected by Arcep in October 2007. Virgin Mobile France has previously suggested that it might be interested in the licence as a joint venture with Numericable, and Egypt's Orascom Telecom recently said it would consider joining a consortium to bid for the licence. Most observers believe that Iliad is the only company able to meet Arcep's requirements for a fourth 3G licence in France.

For more on this story:
Telegeography and Cellular News

Orange: Using free music downloads to attract youth market

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:39:25 -0400

Orange and Universal music have launched a music streaming service that aims to attract subscribers and reduce piracy. The new ‘Monkey' service is targeted at 16-24-year-olds who don't own 3G handsets or have mobile Internet packages but it will provide users who top up €1.16 each month with 600 minutes of music streaming.

According to Pippa Dunn, director of pay-as-you-go at Orange, the company is funding the service as an acquisition tool, similar to its successful two-for-one cinema offer ‘Orange Wednesdays', which it hopes will result in increased top-ups and long-term loyalty. "It's a great opportunity to acquire an audience that will increase their average spend and represent the future of our pay-monthly business too."

Universal Music said it considered Monkey a valuable weapon in the war on piracy as it looks to meet Digital Britain's target of reducing piracy levels by 70 per cent within the next two years. Rob Wells, VP of digital for Universal Music International, said, "It's essentially a piracy play. A large proportion of the demographic this is aimed at aren't spending a great deal on legitimate music."

Commenting on the launch, Ovum said that Monkey was well positioned on basic low cost phones at a time when Spotify was still waiting to sign with Apple's and Google's high-end smartphones that target a slightly older, wealthier consumer.

However, the research firm added that the immediate problems for Orange following this announcement will be to persuade the other three major music labels to join Universal on Monkey, as well as persuading online Spotify users to sign up or stay with Orange instead of saving up for a Spotify-compatible phone.

For more on this story:
NMA and Mobile Choice