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Mobile & Wireless
Orange Offers ‘Unique’ Convergence
Service Draws Flak from Analysts and Competitors
by Iain Morris
Orange went under the spotlight this week, announcing details of
its new converged service. ‘Unique’ allows users to make calls
over the broadband connection when they are at home and
the mobile network when outdoors.
Unique will be available to Orange customers in the UK from
November. It will also be rolled out across other European
markets, including France (from October 5), the Netherlands,
Spain and Poland.
From a consumer perspective, the incentive to subscribe is
supposedly in the cost savings. For a fixed monthly fee,
subscribers to Unique will be entitled to make an unlimited
number of calls to landlines and Orange mobiles when they
are at home.
The service uses Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology to
facilitate a handover between the Internet and the mobile network.
In essence, this means that a user speaking on the phone
over his or her broadband link could leave the home without
dropping the call: it would ‘seamlessly’ move the call onto the mobile
network.
According to Orange’s parent company France Telecom, the
launch of Unique represents something of a landmark in the
group’s ongoing strategy to converge fixed and mobile
telecom services. “This is the first real convergence offer,
dreamed up, developed and commercialized by the group
under the Orange brand,” says Didier Lombard, president and
director general of France Telecom.
Orange’s service will be available over three handsets: the
Motorola A910, the Nokia 6136 and the Samsung P200.
In the UK, Unique is intended to rival BT’s Fusion service, but
the incumbent seems unfazed by the challenge.
“We launched BT Fusion back in 2005, so there’s nothing
unique about this,” says a BT spokesperson.
BT Fusion works in a similar way to Unique, using UMA
technology to facilitate network handover and charging
landline rates for calls made at home. At the time of writing,
Fusion subscribers have a choice between just two handsets
from the same supplier – the Motorola RAZR V3B and the
Motorola V560 – but BT is aiming to stay ahead of the game
by launching a new range of dual-mode handsets later this
year that will allow users to take advantage of its public WiFi
hotspots.
“When you are in range of one of those WiFi hotspots you’ll
be charged at home landline rates,” says BT’s
spokesperson. “We think that’s a considerable value add to
attract more users.”
Operators seem determined to make converged offerings
work as they seek new ways to minimise churn from their
networks and attract new subscribers. But analysts have
questioned their longevity. According to John Delaney, a
principal analyst with Ovum, they all suffer from the same
limitations: ‘a lack of true seamlessness in network handover’
and ‘a very limited handset choice.' Those flaws in the
proposition, he says, are evident in the subscriber figures.
“In May, nine months after launch, BT’s Fusion was reported
to have about 30,000 customers,” he says.
In stark contrast, T-Mobile had signed up 700,000 users to its
@Home service just seven months after service launch in
Germany. Unlike BT Fusion and Unique, the service runs
entirely over the mobile network but charges users at
lower ‘homezone’ rates when they call from within the home.
“Customers can have any mobile phone they want, and
seamlessness is not an issue because no network handover
takes place,” says Delaney.
In the UK, the other mobile operators, including Vodafone
and Virgin Mobile, are also expected to announce plans for
converged-phone services in the coming months.
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