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m419 · 10-05-2009, 13:50

What is Orange thinking!

France Telecom the brand owners and network owners of 95% of the world have been in a financial mess for years, I doubt they would go ahead with the takeover of T-Mobile UK.

Furthermore, Orange home services formerly Freeserve and Wanadoo in the UK has been a flop due to slow development of its infrastructure and due to quad and tripple play providers.

Orange was to enter the pay-tv market and launch a similar service to BT Vision but that idea was thrown out of the window because it lost nearly 200,000 customers around the time and the cash flow dipped. Recently they launched Orange at home phone service, there are two levels of this,you can use it as a CPS service over a BT line or you can use the live box similar to BT's Homehub. I doubt this is catching on.

In Austrailia,Israel,India and a few other countries Hutchison Whampoa kept the Orange brand but leased it from France Telecom, they forced off 2G customers and when that was complete,they quit using the Orange brand and started using there own which inlcude '3' and 'Hutch'.

If 3 was to merge with T-Mobile, Hutchison will likely force everyone to upgrade there 2G phones to 3G or create a seperate customer base soley for 2G customers and call it Hutch or something. I doubt they will keep the T-Mobile brand. The whole process would take up to 5 years to complete.

One thing that Hutchison lacks in the UK and Europe is a fixed and Fibre optic telecoms infrastructure,in some parts of the world they have,but not here. In Hong Kong, Hutchison offer similar services to Virgin Media offering fibre optic cable internet to residential and business customers, they are of course ahead of the UK.

Why Hutchison sold Orange in the first place is just crazy! I mean it was a good brand and had a good 2G infrastructure,here in the UK, One2One now T-Mobile was Orange's direct competitor and was so behind Orange. perhaps they sold it off to make money to pay for 3G licences, Hutchison sold Orange in 1999 to Vodafone and then France Telecom took over in 2000 because of competition issues. Hutchison then began to build its 3G network in the UK and its 3G only network became active around November 2002,it was very undeveloped and had hardly any masts which is why nobody got reception! Now in 2009, the reception is much better although the network needs more masts in order for it to be a 100% 3G network as 3G signals dont travel as far. They have done well compared to One2one/T-Mobile which started in 1993 and only covered Greater London up until 1997 and then began to spread out, by 1999, it still had poor reception and even now T-Mobile's reception is just average outside London.

10-05-2009, 13:50	#23
m419 Inactive Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: London Services: BT Broadband,BT Anytime calls,Sky entertainment extra HD,Vodafone pay monthly Posts: 1,512	Re: T Mobile to leave UK. What is Orange thinking! France Telecom the brand owners and network owners of 95% of the world have been in a financial mess for years, I doubt they would go ahead with the takeover of T-Mobile UK. Furthermore, Orange home services formerly Freeserve and Wanadoo in the UK has been a flop due to slow development of its infrastructure and due to quad and tripple play providers. Orange was to enter the pay-tv market and launch a similar service to BT Vision but that idea was thrown out of the window because it lost nearly 200,000 customers around the time and the cash flow dipped. Recently they launched Orange at home phone service, there are two levels of this,you can use it as a CPS service over a BT line or you can use the live box similar to BT's Homehub. I doubt this is catching on. In Austrailia,Israel,India and a few other countries Hutchison Whampoa kept the Orange brand but leased it from France Telecom, they forced off 2G customers and when that was complete,they quit using the Orange brand and started using there own which inlcude '3' and 'Hutch'. If 3 was to merge with T-Mobile, Hutchison will likely force everyone to upgrade there 2G phones to 3G or create a seperate customer base soley for 2G customers and call it Hutch or something. I doubt they will keep the T-Mobile brand. The whole process would take up to 5 years to complete. One thing that Hutchison lacks in the UK and Europe is a fixed and Fibre optic telecoms infrastructure,in some parts of the world they have,but not here. In Hong Kong, Hutchison offer similar services to Virgin Media offering fibre optic cable internet to residential and business customers, they are of course ahead of the UK. Why Hutchison sold Orange in the first place is just crazy! I mean it was a good brand and had a good 2G infrastructure,here in the UK, One2One now T-Mobile was Orange's direct competitor and was so behind Orange. perhaps they sold it off to make money to pay for 3G licences, Hutchison sold Orange in 1999 to Vodafone and then France Telecom took over in 2000 because of competition issues. Hutchison then began to build its 3G network in the UK and its 3G only network became active around November 2002,it was very undeveloped and had hardly any masts which is why nobody got reception! Now in 2009, the reception is much better although the network needs more masts in order for it to be a 100% 3G network as 3G signals dont travel as far. They have done well compared to One2one/T-Mobile which started in 1993 and only covered Greater London up until 1997 and then began to spread out, by 1999, it still had poor reception and even now T-Mobile's reception is just average outside London.