Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple, iPhone
Orange gets French iPhone in November
It's official: Orange has the iPhone in France.France Telecom, Orange's parent company, says they won't subsidize the iPhone, but also didn't say anything about price, according to CNN Money. They also didn't give a release date other than November-- the UK and Germany are getting it on 9th November, so it should be close to that point.
Reader Samuel, who sent us this French article (all I know is "sacrebleu," sorry), also notes that Apple seems to be signing with the national operators in each country, so the prediction for Italy is TIM, Belgium is predicted Belgacom (although reader Jelle says he saw the iPhone on Base's website, so who knows), KPN in the Netherlands, and so on.
I'm clueless about French wireless providers-- is Orange good? Does this deal have you Francophiles saying oui or no?
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lee said 3:47PM on 9-20-2007
I'm using Orange now with my hacked iPhone, and it works GREAT. Everything is pretty much as when I had it back in the states with AT&T, minus the Visual Voicemail, which is the only fault.
Also, you are only charged for the calls you make, not the calls you receive. I think the same thing works for text messaging, but I'm not sure.
And from what I understand, the plan that I got (for students at 36€ a month), EDGE is included. Good stuff.
So yes, orange is really good, so far as I have seen :)
-Lee
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JR-A said 3:50PM on 9-20-2007
As a French Mac and iPod user, the deal with Orange has me say "Oui".
I use Orange's Business Everywhere solution for work (Edge/3G mobile access for business users) and its pretty good.
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vormkrijger said 3:55PM on 9-20-2007
for belgium ... Base = Orange
BUT in belgium it is prohibited to sell locked phones with a contract
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Allan White said 4:11PM on 9-20-2007
It's "non", not "no" in French. The last N is silent. =)
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JaXX said 4:19PM on 9-20-2007
Deal here is pure cr*p.
No flat rate unlimited Data... Show Stopping before the launch.
PS. Orange has cancelled it's presence at the Apple Expo, they initially reserved a large central stand... but I believe they got scared of people now...
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bieb said 4:34PM on 9-20-2007
Vormkrijger, Base is no part of the Orange network. Mobistar is. It's true although: legally you can't sell a phone with a contract in Belgium. So we have the right to pick the carrier we like once the iPhone lands here ...
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Sam Colak said 5:33PM on 9-20-2007
So well the french site was a bit tough for those who dont speak the language however the main points of the article are (and my french is rusty)
they say they own about 45% of the market, the rest comprised of SFR and Vodaphone.
They aim for a million units sold - the price is a substantial reduction to the original price announced in the US.
that they note the price is 400 euros, a price higher than theat in the US which works out to be about 284 euros at the moment.
At the moment there is no released date but judging from the release in the UK and germany, the date is likely to be about the 9th November.
They think that the phone is very attractive and its likely to be a hit with fans of Apple.
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bibi-pov said 5:45PM on 9-20-2007
Like others have said, Orange is a good deal in terms on technical details. Great coverage, EDGE is ubiquitous and their network works well. And usually even if they're not the cheapest, their plan includes convenient services built-in, so if what's in the plan matters to you (like mobile email, caller-id for instance), it's cheaper than the others. But no unlimited data? Please! But I guess we'll know for sure later and I hope the rumor is wrong. I also wish we wont have to wait later than Nov. 9th. Hopefully I was in NYC last week and I got an iPod touch there, that'll keep me busy until the beast is released...
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Julien said 5:57PM on 9-20-2007
Orange is probably the best operator in France though not the cheapest. Another drawback is that they tend to focus data plans only to professionals. But french site macbidouille has reported that some orange subscribers got a survey today - how they'd feel about some plan with unlimited mail and browsing + 200 SMS...
That'd be smart.
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Charles Nouÿrit said 6:08PM on 9-20-2007
Orange is the historical French telecom provider and is fighting against SFR and Bouygues.
But from what I've heard here in France there is a rumor about the fact that Orange won't be providing a data plan with the iPhone, though I don't believe it, it's still a persistent rumor...
I'm using mine with an Orange MVNO called Ten-mobile.com which provide unlimited data plan for a few euros and it rocks big time.
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Alex said 8:27PM on 9-20-2007
Well here's an interesting bit of information. In Italy it's actually against the law to sell a mobile phone locked to a carrier. Even carrier branded handsets come unlocked right out of the box. I'd expect the Italy announcement (and subsequent availability) to come dead last from all the other major nations.
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JaXX said 1:32AM on 9-21-2007
@Sam: Vodafone and SFR are the same, or it's rather Vodafone who has shares, and SFR who sells Vodafon branded services (I still wonder when the Name change will come over like what happened in Italy with Omnitel ). There are 3 Providers Orange (ex-France Telecom) / SFR-Vodafone / BouyguesTelecom (3G-less operator)
@Charles: Ten Mobile has no unlimited Data, it offers you only 1Megabyte of real data per month. Though it has unlimited websurfing through OperaMini and MSN through a java Applet... they can count every single byte used. MVNO will never beat the operator on which they rely, how could they ? that's whythey sell specially tailored products: Unlimited SMSs, Unlimited calls to 2 Friends, Unlimited Wap, but never all at a time...
Let's face it. French operators will never try to compete, they paid fines because of staying intentionnaly aligned (high).
Unless an operator like Iliad/Free tries "throwing a stone in the pod" (as we say here) like they did with unbundled ADSL by biding on the 4th 3G licence, all we could do is pay pay pay pay pay... !
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Kelmon said 2:36AM on 9-21-2007
Nice to hear that Belgium might get the iPhone but have to confess that I was under the impression that it would be impossible to launch the product here due to the local laws that prohibit lock-in. Honestly, I'm a British national who still can't speak the local languages so I'm missing a lot on the subject but it's interesting news nonetheless and I hope it's right. Mind you, this might mean that the price is bonkers.
On a related subject, what happens with voicemail when you are roaming? In the US with AT&T you get your visual voicemail, but what happens if you roam to another country? Do you get visual voicemail there as well? Do we expect the rollout of the iPhone across Europe to make a difference to this if you roam around the supported region?
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zorga said 3:40AM on 9-21-2007
I've been running hacked iPhone with Orange since last Friday and also roamed into Belgium with it. All works pretty well.
I dont have a data plan unfortunately so I couldnt test that out
Usually when you miss a call and someone leaves a message you get an SMS that says you have a message, etc. That doesnt work anymore. I'm not sure why not seeing that its theoretically phone independent (i had 5 nokias previously, never configured anything to have that service)
My iPhone has frozen 3 times since the unlock, but otherwise, works relatively fine.
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basscadet said 3:59AM on 9-21-2007
thanks to ebay one can simply get one from the US and thanks to hackers one can also use it with any network they like. Only thing missing is visual voicemail and any new features introduced with a firmware update (that will be cracked after some time anyway). End of story.
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Simon said 6:12AM on 9-21-2007
@ basscadet, no it isn't. As long as Apple plays its "cat & mouse" game they may lock your phone with the next firmware upgrade and you'll have to wait again till someone finds a way around it. I'm not planning to buy a phone that can lock me out at any given day.
Besides that the next big iPhone news would be an unlocked phone. In Belgium they can't sell locked phones (I live there) and as far as I understand Australia, Italy and Canada have the same legislation so will we have to wait longer (after Nov 9th) or will Apple sell unlocked phones at a higher price? Maybe, just maybe, we don't get the iPhone at all, would Apple care about a market with only 10.000.000 possible customers?
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zedwards said 5:36PM on 9-21-2007
I use orange business and it is fine. Basically, it is the comparable to Cingular in the states. France Telecom being the previous monopoly equivalent of SBC/AT&T.
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Dave said 4:22AM on 11-03-2007
I'm trying to find a french language pack to use on a 1.02 hacked iphone. Ilang has french, but not very compleat. Calander only.
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