WHEN Hutchison Telecom (UK) launched its Orange Personal Communications Network (PCN) service in Britain in April last year, it was lampooned by the press.
Hutchison had swallowed a GBP30 million (about HK$357.9 million) loss on the closure of a previous attempt at taking on the British mobile market - the Rabbit CT2 system - and there were doubts about the new venture's success.
But succeed it has. By July this year, Orange had built up its business to more than 200,000 customers and was becoming a real threat to the main market participant, Mercury's One-2-One.
Soon after the launch, group managing director for Hutchison Telecom (UK,) Hans Snook, said Orange would 'revolutionise the way people communicate . . . from now on, people will phone people, not places'.
From day one, the network offered coverage of half the British population.
Nokia called it 'a pioneering breakthrough in digital mobile communications' in being the first PCN network anywhere to launch commercially countrywide.