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Mobile & Wireless
Financial
France Telecom-Orange unveils 'Conquests 2015'
Ambitious growth plan will affect entire company
by staff from releases
Stéphane Richard, Chief Executive Officer of France Telecom-Orange unveiled his Group-wide industrial project to the press on Monday, July 5th. This five-year action plan, called "conquests 2015", is aimed at setting out the challenges and perspectives that lie ahead, clarifying the Group’s business activities and hope to regain a sense of conquest and pride within the company.
Three major challenges shaped the plan: an unprecedented social crisis in France, a fast-changing ecosystem as technological development continues to accelerate, bringing with it new uses, and in particular image-based services.
To meet these challenges, Orange has resorted to a "co-development" methodology that has brought together employees from across the Group, from both its business lines and its countries. The first phase began in March in which groups of around 50 people met to define the broad outlines. These were then reworked by around 500 managers from every country and business line, who then went back to share these joint reflections with their teams. The "conquests 2015", project grew out of the convergence of all these discussions.
Orange aims first and foremost to win over the men and women that form the heart of the company by offering its employees a beneficial working environment thanks to a new vision of human resources, a new management style and shared values. Secondly, the IT systems, which have become increasingly complicated over the years, will be greatly simplified or entirely overhauled in certain cases. Finally, to address the challenge posed by the rising average age of employees in France, the Group plans to recruit 10,000 additional employees from 2010 to end 2012. The measures set-out in the Group's new social contract for France represent a total budget of 900 million euros over the same period, excluding anticipated savings from the part-time for seniors plan and natural attrition.
The conquest of networks means increasing coverage and bandwidth for both fixed and mobile networks, in both mature and emerging countries. In France, Orange will invest two billion euros by 2015 to deploy a new fiber optic network. This will guarantee coverage for 40% of households through coverage in every region of mainland France by 2012 and in every department by 2015 (including the three overseas territories). In addition, the Group is ready to launch LTE as soon as the regulations are in place. Orange will also invest in the monetization of mobile data traffic as well as in the deployment of “green” networks such as the Oryx program of solar-powered mobile telephone masts in Africa.
Orange also seeks to inspire the confidence of its customers. The Group's ambition is to offer a superior customer experience compared to other operators in every respect. This includes the analysis and anticipation of needs, technical support, assisted migration to new services, control over expenses, etc. Orange is also developing products in healthcare and education as well as mobile payment or money transfer services such as its Orange Money program in Africa.
Finally, Orange plans to grow from close to 200 million customers at present to 300 million by 2015 across its entire footprint.
France Telecom reiterates its objectives to generate an organic cash flow of 8 billion euros for 2010 and 2011, excluding the acquisition of spectrum or licenses, excluding the litigation concerning corporate tax, and including the benefits and net expenses of the "conquests 2015" project. All other aspects of the Group's financial policy remain unchanged.
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