About Orange UK

Orange UK can be described as an ‘Internet Service Provider’ and a ‘Mobile Network Operator’ in the UK. France Telecom is its owner. Its origin can be traced to 1994. Hutchison Telecom was its owner then. Mannesmann AG later bought it. It was in the year 2000 in the month of May that the present owners bought Orange UK. Orange UK can boast of having around 17 m customers by the way of its broadband and mobile services.

Service

Currently, 2 packages of mobile phone are offered by Orange UK. They include: pay monthly and pay as you go service plans. Like many other plans regarding prepaid services, mobile users of pay as you go are provided with option of topping-up their phone through a ‘Swipe Card’, via debit card, credit card, or over internet.

The ‘pay monthly’ service offers customers option of 24, 18, or 12 month contracts. Such contracts come packaged with text messages, minutes, and additional charges for ‘Mobile Data Services’ and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Services) in certain contracts. Orange UK, right now, operates 3G, EDGE, and GPRS service. It is in process to roll out a ‘HSDPA network’. 2G network of Orange UK covers around 99% of population of the UK. It also claims to have the biggest integrated 2.5G/3G network in UK. Another claim mentions that around 1.5 m pounds are spent per day through investment in network.

Apart from all these, DSL services are also provided by Orange UK. The brand name is same. It was originally operated in UK as ‘Free serve’, then bought by ‘France Telecom’ and renamed as ‘Wanadoo’. On 1st of June, 2006, Wanadoo was again renamed as ‘Orange’. At the time of launching the DSL Broadband service, free service was offered. Customers were told to join TalkTalk in foray for the market share.