FT is moving ahead with its previously announced NExT strategy (New Experience in Telecoms). The current stage is to bring all of its brands (Wanadoo, Equant, ..) under the Orange label. FT targets to become a converged company that offers fixed and mobile services. Orange has started operating as the single brand for France Telecom's Internet, TV and mobile offerings on June 1. In addition, FT is rolling out new products such as HDTV over IP and high-definition voice for IP calls. It also unveiled "Unik" - its new fixed-to-mobile phone. Unik will allow making unlimited calls via mobile networks, Wi-Fi and its Livebox IPTV console. The new offers are simpler, easy to read and more competitive. Integrating all products under a single brand and bill could help attract new customers, but also retain clients from changing to another telco. The rebranding goes hand-in-hand with a single online services portal, a single customer support contact for any of the Orange services, and a shared customer loyalty program. But FT is also looking to extend its market reach. With targeting also entertainment and home security systems but not entering the content industry, FT should double its market to about €168bn, of which 10% will be entertainment. The move is identified as valuable when voice is becoming a commodity product, competition and regulation are strong in the telecom industry, and entertainment and home systems are less regulated.
The group currently has more than 85m mobile users through 23 mobile operators, more than 8m broadband customers in Europe and serves 1m businesses in 220 countries.
