France Telecom to Shift to "Orange" as Retail Brand

France Telecom is finally poised to become plain "Orange," a brand which could gain increasingly broad global recognition as the telco pushes into emerging markets.

The move illustrates one facet of how the global telecom business has changed in recent decades, with most "national" telecom companies being compelled to look for growth outside their original service territories.

At a more local level, the same process has affected small rural telcos and competitive local exchange carriers, all of whom have had to consider growing footprint outside original service areas to fuel growth.

France Telecom aims to transition all its businesses to the Orange brand, currently used for its mobile and triple play activities, within the next 12 months.

France Telecom becomes just 'Orange'

"The World Has Changed," or Has It?

"The world has changed," Orange Business CEO Says

Speaking to an audience of enterprise executives, Orange Business Services CEO
Vivek Badrinath noted that the world has been changed forever as a consequence of the economic crisis.

"The world is not the same as it was two years ago in terms of what's expected in this room," he noted. The logical question is what those new things are that seem to have changed the market so vastly. The answers aren't easy to figure out.

"New collaboration and social networks for customers and employees are emerging and we now need to work around multiple interactions with our end customers," he says. Sure, but hardly a need that was "transformed" because of the economic crisis.

"We have both the obligation to provide Sarbanes-Oxley compatible, efficient, protected environments for our customers and we have to face the challenges of openness," he says. Yes, but that was true before the economic crisis.

"You're asking us to be faster because the world is moving fast," he says. Agreed, but hardly something new.

"Our ambition is to become the leading developer of applications; to establish ourselves as a true integrator of services," he says. That is the more-shocking statement, perhaps.

Specifically, Orange plans to add a new layer of services that would, for example, enable CIOs to manage all BlackBerrys (password management, policy management), no matter what network they are on.

Services underpinned by the core network expertise seem to be the direction Orange wants to go. "Telecom can get commoditized but its the customer experience, with the services and systems we bring, that defines the value that we bring to this market," he says.

All worthy goals. But one suspects Badrinath was engaging in a bit of enthusiastic hyperbole. I see nothing here that speaks to a "world that is not the same."

It is an ambitious, worthy goal to aim to become the leading developer of applications, and to own the customer experience. Badrinath is right to note the huge change this would represent in a new world with many third-party experience providers. It just isn't entirely clear this has changed much because fo the global recession.

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24 Carriers, 3 Handset Vendors Launch 3 Billion User App Initiative

A new consortium already including 24 global mobile service providers, Sony, Samsung and LG are creating a new applications community, allowing developers to create apps working across networks serving three billion people.

The new "Wholesale Applications Community" is a recognition of the role application stores now playing in fostering new applications and a great deal of the value of mobile broadband services.

América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Mobilkom Austria Group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Telia Sonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind, as well as Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are founding members.

Whether directly or indirectly, by design or by default, the new development community will compete with the Apple App Store as well as other app stores being created by Google and other device and application providers.

The real carrot for developers, if the initiative can iron out any number of important details, is access to a potential audience of three billion mobile users. In practice, discrete markets will be smaller, limited by natural language communities, for example. But it is an ambitious initiative showing access providers are not interested in forfeiting their roles in the application ecosystem to other handset or application providers.

Orange iPhone Sales Stronger than Expected

Apple's iPhone is selling better than mobile carrier Orange (France Telecom) expected, Didier Lombard, Orange CEO, says. Orange expected sales to slow after the start of the new year, but that hasn't happened, Associated Press reports.

Orange had sold 30,000 iPhones in the five days after it went on sale in France, and planned to sell a total of 100,000 of the handsets by the end of 2007.

It doesn't appear too many customers are anxious to buy the unlocked iPhone, sold without a service contract and therefore for a significantly higher price.

Orange has sold "very, very few" iPhones without a contract, Lombard says.

Android: It's the Business Models

The most important thing about Android, the open mobile operating system and platform sponsored by Google, is arguably not the technology or the implications for handset cost: it's the development of business models.

One might think: "well, this is open source, so we will look for business models that are like the existing models for open source." But that's probably not going to be the case. Today's revenue model for open source is payment for enhancements, support and training.

To some extent, the business model is implicit rather than explicit. If I am a hardware or software applications provider, I simply use Asterisk because it is a lower-cost way of implementing something that an end user actually buys, even it the thing being bought essentially is a "legacy" requirement.

Voice mail, phone system or messaging platform are examples. In those cases, the operating system is an input to a business model, but not the model, which is the same one that existed before the open source tool was available.

Translated into a mobile market, it looks different. Open source will not do much, in and of itself, to lower the cost of a handset. So open source doesn't necessarily mean "cheap or free handset."

One can assume handset makers using Android will stabilize their versions so there is little need for third party end user support. That is a bug, not a feature, in the mobile end user world.

And since the whole idea is "easy to use," there shouldn't be much of a market created for training people how to use, develop, maintain and upgrade their operating systems. End users don't want to do that.

Assuming Android devices are used on existing networks (the 700-MHz C band network remains a bit of a wild card), the pricing models for data access are relatively affordable already, so it isn't clear whether there is immediate impact on data plan pricing either.

So consider Android a better way to help create a mobile Web business. The mobile phone business is built on recurring payment of access fees for voice, text and data access. The mobile Web just assumes access.

So the revenue model must begin where the Web itself begins. And that means advertising, to the extent that features and content have to be monetized directly. Of course, there's also content and applications given away for free in hopes that the attention will lead to support for some other business model, be that public relations, consulting, marketing, software or what have you. In that case a content provider doesn't necessarily require a revenue model.

But that's not what service providers, device manufacturers and application providers are looking at. The issue is revenue. And from where I sit, that means a media model.

The media model includes "for fee" and "for free" services and content, with greater or lesser degrees of advertising support. That means "aggregating eyeballs" and "aggregating highly-detailed information about the owners of those eyeballs" and "tracking the behavior of those people." That makes the advertising model quite valuable.

In the mobile arena, valuable as in "can I entice you to visit Starbucks right now; it is around the corner?" Valuable as in "are you hungry and a lover of good Thai food? You are half a block away."

Some will speculate about whether an entirely ad-supported model is conceivable. Well, it's conceivable, but not likely. Broadband access isn't free. But that isn't the point. If the value is high enough, a reasonable fee is not a barrier to usage.

Android is more likely to have an impact in making the mobile Web, and applications built on the mobile Web, far easier to use and vastly richer in functionality.

That's a hugely important and economically significant activity. But I don't think Android is about "free phone calls" or "free Web access" or "free phones," as many either think or hope for. Rich applications will be reward enough for users, who are quite capable of figuring out a value-for-money proposition. Android is about the promise of a mobile Web so useful we won't mind paying access fees to use it.

The one exception is that some users will appreciate "sometimes" being able to use Wi-Fi hot spots to access applications. This is a subset of users who choose not to pay a recurring fee for fully-mobile access, and want to rely on Wi-Fi for all of their connectivity.

Then there are users who occasionally will be happy to have Wi-Fi access for signal strength reasons, even if they are comfortable with a fully-mobile broadband connection.

Still, it seems likely that the early pull of Android applications is going to be location-based. "Where am I? How do I get there? Where can I find it? I didn't know that was on sale. So that's where you are."

Ad-supported phone calls, devices or access might have some role to play, sometimes. But I doubt that's the big impact.

France Telecom: Flat Organic Cash Flow for '08

In confirming its 2007 organic cash flow target of 7.5 billion euros and setting the same level for 2008, France Telecom executives also point out how hard it is for large incumbent service providers to achieve organic growth inside their present service territories, without expanding out of region.

France Telecom says it will achieve organic cash flow at this level as long as it also hits the same operating margin and maintains investment expenditure at about 13 percent of revenues and maintains the same 2007 dividend distribution rate at between 40 and 45 percent of organic cash flow.

Growth will occur "beyond 2008 and over the medium term," France Telecom executives say.

But growth might not be a problem only the largest incumbents have. SureWest Communications has acquired an out-of-market broadband provider, Everest Broadband, in Kansas City, marking SureWest's first-ever move outside its metro market, aside from the competitive local exchange carrier operations SureWest conducts in the broader Sacramento market, where it competes with at&t.
Growth, despite a management team's best efforts, seems now to be a matter of expanding out of territory. The corollary might be that internal, organic growth is stalled. Presumably, internal new services initiatives will have time to catch on while most companies look to acquisitions to fuel near-term growth.

Which Future for Telcos?

What name would you choose to describe "who you are" if you were an executive at any leading incumbent telecom company? Sure, you might come up with "converged communications and entertainment provider" or something like that, but the term is unsatisfying and probably will confuse most mass market customers in any case. BT already is trying the "information and communications" company tagline. The problem with such efforts as it isn't so clear how the tags differentiate "telcos" from large system integrators, large software houses offering hosted services, cable companies and possibly others.

"Experience provider" is a buzzword some toss around, but it lacks much descriptive power, beyond suggesting an approach to creating services and features. "Application provider" likewise hints at something important, but again is rather too broad to be useful.

But no matter how the nomenclature efforts finally resolve themselves, it seems clear enough that something important is changing. Even if the unique, irreplaceable assets any "telco" owns are the actual pipes and software used to create communications capabilities over those pipes, that will not be a key part of the future identity.

One way or the other, "applications" are going to figure into the description in some key way. Which is odd, in a way. To a very large degree, telcos have always been "application" providers, in the sense that voice is an application running on a network optimized to provide it.

The big change now is the sheer range of applications providers create or deliver.

The big conundrum is that the irreplaceable and unique assets "telcos" possess, aside from their regulatory prowess, is the pipes and associated software that makes those pipes useful. And yet it seems inevitable that "telcos" want to be known as something else more directly associated with "apps."

If you can configure this out, please, make sure all the rest of us know. Maybe somebody can capture the multiple values in one easy to remember phrase.

30,000 Orange iPhones Sold in Less than a Week

France Telecom's subsidiary mobile carrier Orange saysit has sold 30,000 Apple iPhones since they debuted in France less than a week ago. In addition, nearly half of the sales are resulting in new subscribers for the carrier. Orange has a year-end target of 100,000 unit sales.

European VoIP Market Soars

Though VoIP might largely be driven by cable companies in the U.S. market, the 22 million-plus VoIP subs in the European market bear witness to dramatically different market dynamics. In part because of robust local loop unbundling rules, independent broadband competitors have had quite a field day, both as providers of broadband access and VoIP services.

In the French market, for example, France Telecom (Orange) is "the number two provider of VoIP in the world," says Carlos DeSilva, France Telecom director. "In France, 30 percent of all calls are VoIP and it is used by about eight million customers."

Unlocked German iPhone: 999 Euros

Deutsche Telekom, after being sued by Vodafone over availability of unlocked iPhones, will offer the device for 999 euros ($1,483) without requiring a two-year exclusive contract with its T-Mobile unit.

T-Mobile changed the rules after Vodafone won a court injunction that bans T-Mobile from selling the iPhone with contracts or the "SIM lock" that prevents the phone from working on another network.

Apple and Orange have the same issues in France.

Orange, Apple Nail Deal for France iPhone Sales

After what appears to be a delay caused by commercial disagreements, Orange and Apple have settled on a deal whereby Orange is the exclusive distributor of the iPhone in France. Under the original deal, Orange agreed to pay Apple 30 percent of revenues generated from iPhones sold with mobile contracts. it appears Apple wanted more, to offset lower margins on phones sold unlocked, as French law requires. There is no public word on how the original deal might have been modified.

Mobile IS Broadband by 2011

Mobile broadband will be the dominant broadband platform worldwide in 2011, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. There will be more than one billion broadband subscribers worldwide in 2011, with the majority using mobile rather than fixed networks.

Mobile broadband will be a "more than" $400 billion service revenues business in 2012, as a result. Of course, getting there will mean climbing a wall of end user resistance to mobile broadband pricing, research by Parks and Associates suggests. That might be especially true if mobile broadband winds up being a replacement for narrowband mobile access, rather than fixed mobile access.

HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) will be the leading mobile broadband technology by then in terms of number of subscribers, followed by EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized and mobile WiMAX.

"Mobile broadband will represent close to half of total mobile service revenues in 2012," says Mike Roberts, Informa analyst.

Orange Gets iPhone in France

France Telecom's Orange has sealed the iPhone deal, it appears. France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard says the iPhone would be distributed in France "before Christmas, probably in November." Orange does not appear likely to subsidize the handset.

iPhone for O2: Zero Margin for Carrier

Mobile operator O2 (Telefonica) reportedly has won the right to sell the Apple iPhone in the U.K. market. It may ultimately regret the victory, as the Guardian reports O2 is giving Apple 40 percent of service revenues.

The other U.K. mobile operators reportedly backed away from the deal as the O2 business arrangement essentially is a guaranteed money loser. O2 of course is gambling it can leverage the deal to take share from its U.K. competitors.

As part of the deal, Carphone Warehouse will act as an authorized retailer for O2 as well. Apple apparently retains control of device pricing.

The deal is part of a number of potential destabilizing developments in the mobile business. It isn't simply who is in the networks business. It also is where value and hence profit are to be made in the mobile ecosystem. Apple thinks it is the phone. Google might think it is the ability to create targeted advertising. Other players, such as satellite TV providers, might see value in the ability to create a triple play including broadband access and voice.

In the U.S. market there is the possibility of bids for 700 MHz spectrum, enough to construct a national broadband network. Google has said it likely will bid, and Apple itself is said to be considering its own bid. Other contestants in need of a terrestrial broadband capability, such as DirecTV and EchoStar, have to be weighing their own options as well.

Buying a transmission network is a costly way to create an application delivery network. But there are precedents. Broadcast TV, radio, cable TV, cellular, paging, satellite TV and telephone networks all were built to provide a single "killer" application. Apple could be looking at 700 MHz as a way of jumpstarting mobile video. Google is more interested in mobile advertising. The satellite providers would gain a terrestrial broadband and voice capability to create a triple play under their own control.

One might question whether any new firm focused on new applications would want the headaches of running a network. One might question whether the advantage of owning a network is really worth what it would cost to acquire spectrum and construct a network. But it is a measure of destabilization that such developments are being pondered.

Separately, T-Mobile is expected to win exclusive iPhone rights in Germany, while Orange wins that right in France. At this point, Apple is betting the device trumps the network. The U.K. iPhone will use the slower 2.5G EDGE network, not the faster 3G network.

at&t, Verizon, Time Warner Telecom Top Ethernet Providers

Two of the top three providers of U.S. retail business Ethernet services gained port share for mid-year 2007 as compared to year-end 2006 results, according to Vertical Systems Group. In addition, a formerly cable company affiliated contestant entered into the top tier for the first time. Time Warner Telecom, started as an affiliate of Time Warner Cable, has been spun out on its own.

At&t, Verizon Business and Time Warner Telecom are the top three U.S. retail business Ethernet services providers, as measured by ports in service, says Vertical Systems Group.

At&t, including the former BellSouth market share, holds the leading position with a 19.5 percent share of mid-2007 ports. Still, at&t’s share declined compared to the combined year-end 2006 shares for at&t (13.6 percent port share) and BellSouth (8.5 percent) separately.

Verizon Business is second overall with a 15.8 percent port share, up from 12.2 percent at year-end 2006. In third position is Time Warner Telecom with 13.7 percent of ports, a jump from 10.7 percent in 2006, says Vertical Systems Group.

Cox Business, holding a port share of 8.9 percent, now is in fourth position—and is the first U.S. cable company to climb to the top tier of metro Ethernet providers.

Cogent is fifth with an 8.6 percent share of the market, an increase from 8.2 percent at year-end 2006. Qwest (including OnFiber) is sixth at 8.4 percent, down from a 9.9 percent port share.

Yipes is seventh with a share of 4.6 percent, a decline from 5.4 percent at the end of 2006. Yipes recently announced its acquisition by Reliance Communications and will operate as a business unit within the company's FLAG Telecom operations.

Other Business Ethernet Services providers comprise an aggregate 20.5 percent of the market, including AboveNet, American Fiber Systems, Alpheus Communications, American Telesis, Arialink, Balticore, Bright House Networks, Charter Business, CIFNet, Cincinnati Bell, Comcast Business, CT Communications, Electric Lightwave, Embarq, Expedient, Exponential-e, Fibernet Telecom Group, FiberTower, Global Crossing, Globix, IP Networks, Level 3 (including Broadwing), LS Networks, Masergy, Met-Net, Neopolitan Networks, NTELOS, NTT/Verio, Optimum Lightpath, Orange Business, RCN, Savvis, Spirit Telecom, Sprint, SuddenLink, Surewest, Time Warner Cable, US LEC, US Signal, Veroxity, Virtela, Windstream and XO Communications.