Orange Accelerates the Roll-out of Mobile HD Voice in Europe

By Orange, PRNE
Saturday, February 13, 2010

BARCELONA, February 14 -

    - Following the World's First Commercial Launch by Orange of a Mobile
      High-definition (HD) Voice Service in Moldova in Sept 2009, Orange Will
      Also Launch Mobile HD Voice in France, Luxembourg and Spain in Addition
      to the UK and Belgium in 2010



    - The Service Will Deliver a Significantly Improved Quality of Voice and
      Sound That Will Enable Orange to Transform the Mobile Experience for
      its Customers

    - Three Month Customer Trial to Run from Spring in the UK

Orange is today ramping up its planned roll-out of mobile HD
voice services in Europe with the addition of France, Spain and Luxembourg to
its 2010 roadmap. Mobile HD voice is the second critical strand in Orange's
HD voice strategy, building on from the highly successful delivery of HD
voice services for VOIP in 2006. Following technological developments, Orange
has confirmed that its UK customer trial of mobile HD voice will start from
Spring and run for three months.

In September 2009, Orange became the world's first operator to
commercially launch a mobile HD voice service in Moldova, announcing plans to
bring mobile HD voice to the UK and Belgium in 2010. In addition to mobile HD
voice, Orange was also the first operator to launch HD over VOIP, first in
France and shortly to be rolled out to Poland and Spain.

Olaf Swantee, senior executive vice president for Orange's
global mobile business, said: "As far as Orange is concerned, voice is not
just a commodity. With mobile HD voice, we are delivering true customer
innovation - one that will genuinely enrich and transform our customers'
lives. By being the first to innovate and deliver a new mobile voice
experience, we provide a compelling and differentiated proposition which sets
Orange apart. High-definition voice is the future standard for mobile
communication."

Customers using mobile HD voice services will benefit from the
best possible sound quality, including a much richer and natural sound that
is capable of conveying emotion significantly better than an ordinary
handset. It helps people hear better in noisy environments, providing clearer
voice conversations and creating a much closer feeling of proximity between
both parties, almost as if callers are actually in the same room.

Orange plans to rapidly extend the range of HD
voice-compatible mobile handsets across Europe. Pricing and handsets will be
announced at the time of launch locally.

HD Voice uses the AMR-WB (Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband) speech
codec. This provides excellent audio quality due to a wider speech bandwidth
of 50-7000 Hz compared to the current narrowband speech codec of 300-3400 Hz.
The AMR-WB delivers significantly enhanced sound quality whilst utilising the
same network resources.

Voice services are expected to continue to be the largest
revenue generator worldwide, accounting for 69% revenues on a global basis
and for no less than 60% in any region in 2014 (Ovum).

For more information: www.orange.com, www.francetelecom.com
, www.orange-business.com

Georgina Hart: +44-7730-989-693, georgina.hart at orange-ftgroup.com; Vanessa Clarke: +44-7891-056-593, vanessa.clarke at orange-ftgroup.com; Heloise Rothenbuhler: +33-1-44-44-03-47, heloise.rothenbuhler at orange-ftgroup.com; Louis-Michel Aymard : +33-1-44-44-61-54, louismichel.aymard at orange-ftgroup.com

Discussion

ruben
May 10, 2010: 2:46 am

is Tom Adams,cell no 0731883049 or 0836221516
bussy promoting Orange mobile network in south africa?

YOUR VIEW POINT
NAME : (REQUIRED)
MAIL : (REQUIRED)
will not be displayed
WEBSITE : (OPTIONAL)
YOUR
COMMENT :