Orange Announces “Free” Broadband TV
Orange plans to offer a UK broadband television service this year, in direct competition with BT and BSkyB’s converged television and internet product, due to be launched shortly.
Orange, which recently rebranded ISP Wanadoo with the Orange moniker (see
Wanadoo Makes Way For Orange Price War Brews Over Free Broadband), and Orange’s 15 million mobile subscribers taking up stand-alone packages like T-Mobile’s Flext.
There is talk by Orange of a desire to persuade BSkyB and Setanta, who have snapped up rights to Premiership football (see Sky Scores Premiership Pub Deal With Setanta), to put their pay TV sports channels on the service. BSkyB is preparing to offer its own “free” broadband to its customers over the summer. Broadband television service BT Vision, set to launch later in the year (see BT Unveils Next Generation TV Service), will enable customers to catch up on Freeview programmes from the past seven days and access pay TV content.
Introducing Orange TV in Britain relies on take-up of Orange’s broadband service. Orange is offering the “free” broadband to mobile customers who spend more than £30 a month and are willing to sign up to an 18-month contract.
Bundling broadband and mobile services is also designed to increase take-up of the company’s Livebox home-hub, installed in 10% of Wanadoo’s two million internet households in Britain. Orange intends to connect Livebox, which uses wi-fi wireless technology, to a host of services including TV and a OnePhone service, launching in Britain this year.
Orange hopes that each new service will produce an increase in revenues to offset competition in its mobile and ISP markets. The company has also ventured into a voice over internet protocol called Orange Wireless & Talk. There are additional plans to launch a range of converged products including music, gaming, communication and security services in the near future.
France Telecom claims that the news marks the latest milestone of the company’s transformation into the world’s first truly integrated communications provider.
Chris Williams, broadband product manager at uSwitch.com, said that the latest offer by Orange through its repackaged broadband deal was further evidence of a changing telecoms market, continuing the trend begun by CarPhone Warehouse’s Talk Talk offering. He also said customers looked set to benefit from even more packages and competition in the future.
“The TalkTalk ‘free broadband’ bundle, announced in April, signalled the introduction of a new generation of telecoms packages, and the resulting developments, including this latest offer from Orange, have cemented the direction we expect the telecoms market to take,” he said.
“We are now seeing a whole host of communications companies, from Sky to O2 and Vodafone, either announce plans or signal their intention to enter the broadband market with bundled packages in the near future. We are at the dawn of a new age of bundling for consumers, and this will become the norm for the major telecoms suppliers,” he added.
ORANGE: 07973 100 150 www.orange.co.uk