France Telecom has rebranded its French and UK Internet and mobile units under one brand, Orange, and is offering quadruple play services through those units in France now, and the UK soon. In addtion to mobile in France, it will offer broadband, VoIP and IPTV, while offering just the first three in the UK for now. The move anticipates a similar strategy for the near future articulated by Vodafone on Tuesday. In the announcement, Sanjiv Ahuja, Chief Executive Officer of Orange, said:
"Customers today want a seamless experience. They don't care about the technology. And with the convergence of all the Group's services under the Orange brand, customers will be able to access all their information, communications and entertainment needs wherever, whenever and however they wish."
Ahuja is dead on in the case of many customers, and BT and NTL must be a might worried at this point, which probably explains why NTL picked up Virgin Mobile a while back.
Mobile operators have done a much better job than their fixed-line cousins at innovating to stay up with customer needs, which doesn't speak well of the fixed-line operators. Leading with mobile and advanced services such as VoIP and IPTV is a smart move.
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