Orange hurls price challenge at competition
Orange, Hutchison Whampoa's 49 per cent-owned British mobile telephone group, yesterday threw down the gauntlet to its competitors with the introduction of a new package of price cuts, services and inducements to attract customers from rival services.
In a raft of offers, Orange is seeking to expand its presence in Britain's mobile phone market using the most advanced technology.
The company said the number of new subscribers in the second quarter of this year rose 20 per cent from the previous period. It said half of Britain would be using mobile phones by 2004, up from 16 per cent presently.
Orange also said it was cutting back by up to 66 per cent on all standard off-peak rates as well as reducing its monthly charge for 30 minutes of talk time.
The company said the reductions illustrated its competitive advantage, low marginal operating costs and drive to increase usage of spare capacity.
It said the new offers were aimed at trying to replace the use of traditional fixed-line networks.
Orange is introducing a package costing only 50 pence (about HK$6.48) a day that would allow customers to make 20 minutes of off-peak calls.
'As a result of today's announcements, we see the growth of Orange's customer base exceeding the current consensus of analyst forecasts,' finance director Graham Howe said.
'We also believe today's initiatives will significantly increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn,' he said, referring to the rate at which customers leave a service, often within a year.
In a pledge of network reliability, Orange said that beginning in July, customers would get one minute of free talk time recorded on their next bill for every telephone call that is cut off and the number dialed again in five minutes.
By year-end, Orange plans to introduce its 'wildfire' service, a virtual personal assistant that is voice-activated and can be accessed from any telephone.
The service will take messages, collect callers' numbers, make outgoing calls and travel bookings, arrange meetings, organise conference calls, and provide reminders.
Orange is also offering, from September, global mobile satellite services via its marketing arrangement with Iridium, the Motorola-led satellite cellular phone consortium.
Businesses are to be offered an integrated wireless switchboard called IPBX.
'Today's announcements are the start of delivering a new generation of wire-free services and a totally new approach to pricing,' Orange managing director Hans Snook said.
'We believe they take Orange well beyond anything available in the mobile market today.' He said Orange's heavy investment in its network - the largest GSM 1800 network worldwide - and its information technology platforms, allowed it to leapfrog some of its competition.
Orange, which is the newest of Britain's four mobile-telephone operators, is known for being innovative.
'Our goal is that people in the future will not need a fixed-line phone and that Orange will keep on setting the standards that others can only follow,' Mr Snook said.
The company expects core base stations to rise to 6,000 from 4,000 by the first quarter of next year, which it says will give it up to 50 per cent more than its competitors.
