UK Telecom: Orange enters fixed line market

Telecom giants Orange has announced that they are planning to enter the fixed line telephony segment in the UK market. This would become the first such entry by a mobile service provider in England and might lead to other players enter this market for fixed line telephones.

Orange plans to start their operations from this coming April. Initially, the company would be offering their services to business customers and have further plans to expand their services to home consumers.

Orange would be merging with internet group Wanadoo to offer bundled services to the UK based consumers. Both these companies are owned by France Telecom. They would be using the network of Cable & Wireless and the company is claiming that their services would be as much as 20% cheaper than competitors BT.

Orange currently services close to 15 million customers in the UK and employs 12,000 staff.