Dearest Twitter, the time has come for me to say goodbye to this account. After many years in the Orange PR team, I now have a new role within the company that focuses purely on social media and how best we can use it as a business….so no more tweeting PR/news from me I’m afraid :

This profile was set up to communicate news about Orange UK and that’s what it’ll continue to do… so from next week this account will become @OrangeUKnews.

For those who wish to stay in touch I’ll be tweeting from my new personal account @ConorMaples. Onwards and upwards folks, it’s been a blast. x

via TwitLonger — When you talk too much for Twitter.

I strongly recommend keeping tabs on what Conor’s up to via @conormaples.

Congratulations on the new role Conor and every success!

Have you been hearing about this deal from Orange? It’s been capturing the imaginations of quite a few normob (“normal mobile user”) friends and family. I’ve overheard people discussing it multiple times a day so — anecdotally at least — it’s certainly gathering a lot of attention.

Here’s the offer: If you upgrade to the new Nokia Lumia 800 (on £36/month), you’ll get an XBOX 360 absolutely free. For many, this is likely to be a huge, huge draw — and given the cross-platform fertilisation between Windows Phone and Microsoft’s XBOX (There’s a big green “XBOX LIVE” tile on every Windows Phone) — it does make a lot of sense.

I wonder how popular this offer is? I’ll see if I can find out. From the point of view of Nokia, it’s good to see these kind of offers from operators.

There’s more information on the Orange site. You’ll also see the posters advertising this in Orange Shops across the UK (if you haven’t already).

Well, reader Dmitri decided to take up the offer. I think it’s pretty accurate to say that his expectations were set to rock bottom when he phoned up initially as the Orange person didn’t seem to know much about the service. However all was not lost:

Today (a day-and-a-bit-later) I get a call from a knowledgeable person who asked me what prefix I want. Five minutes later she calls back and confirms the line is working – I am pleased with the number they picked for me. I promptly received an SMS and an e-mail with the summary of everything and later on I’m going to set up the service and see how it really works!

This is good news.

One point that Dmitri makes is that, unfortunately, he can’t call out from that number:

I just discovered a slight disadvantage to this feature. If, say, I want to call somebody, they’ll be seeing my mobile caller ID and not the pocket landline caller ID.

Still.. it’s good to see positive feedback about an operator service!

I just came across this service from the team at Orange Business called Pocket Landline. It does what it says on the tin.

For a tenner a month, you pick a local landline number that’s redirected to your Orange Business mobile number. Job done. That’s it.

It’s a really good concept — aimed at businesses who might ordinarily just advertise a mobile number. As we all know, that doesn’t necessarily give customers the impression of longevity. Landline numbers *look* better. At least that’s the angle that Orange takes with its marketing.

Have a watch of this quick video introducing the service:

I’m pleased to see Orange doing this. I’m pleased to see a tiny bit of innovation. I like how simple and clear the offering is. I can imagine lots of sole traders and small businesses buying a number when they’re next in the Orange Store upgrading their phone. It’s a bit of a no brainer.

A tenner a month is quite expensive for a number that simply redirects. However given there are no redirect charges to your mobile, I suppose that’s doable.

I think the simplicity will appeal. You’ve been able to get this kind of offering from the likes of Vodafone via their OneNet/OneNet Express service for some time however their service is a little bit more involved.

Nice to see stuff happening. I actually found out about Orange’s Pocket Landline service from a banner ad I saw earlier today. Who says advertising doesn’t work, eh?

Thank you Orange…

You can find more about FilmToGo right here. I recommend downloading the app as it’s a seamless experience.

Everything Everywhere CEO Olaf Swantee continues restructure policy axing 22 senior positions including VPs of strategies, networks and propositionsEverything Everywhere EE CEO Olaf Swantee has axed a further 22 senior executives as he looks to streamline the operator’s functionality.

via Everything Everywhere cuts another 22 executives | Mobile News Online.

It’s FilmToGo Thursday. Or Orange Thursday. Or Orange FilmToGo Day! This week’s film is The Losers which, I have to say, looks like good old fashioned suspend-your-disbelief Michael Bay-style action. Plus it features that dude from The Wire, Idris Elba. Anything with him is bound to be worth a look.

I forgot my Orange iPhone today so I’m going to have to try and get my redemption code later on tonight. Although I won’t be downloading the movie until I’ve got a decent internet connection, thanks to the total screw-up with 3 over the weekend. (Read: An expensive example of 3′s stupid data policies). The proper internet connection is installed at home on Tuesday. I can’t wait.

Meanwhile I note that — alas — the FilmToGo branding has disappeared from iTunes. It must have just been a campaign. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I was impressed at the ability of the Orange marketing team to get Apple to use its resources (the iTunes desktop app, mobile app AND the iTunes newsletter) to highlight that only Orange customers get ‘free’ films on Thursdays.

Of course it’s not quite free. It’s 35p per film rental — i.e. nothing, as far as most UK customers will be concerned.

(Next week, the movie is Coco Before Chanel. Yup, I’ll have a watch of that too!)

The executive also pointed out that there’s quite a lot of hope that Olaf will change things, that he’ll ‘get’ what needs to be done, that he won’t keep the company chugging along in first gear.

“Why don’t you put it down in an open letter then?” I said.

The executive gave this some thought and, on condition of anonymity, sent me this text. I’ve personally verified his position and identity at Everything Everywhere.

Here we go:

Dear Olaf,

Today you start officially as CEO of Everything Everywhere.

This letter should help you understand what many of the Everything Everywhere employees think and offers some advice to help Everything Everywhere regain its’ rightful position as the UK’s leading mobile operator.

Lets start with where we are today.

Everyone knows it but no-one says it: we’ve lost our way. We spend too much time with our heads in the sand. We’re hugely internally focused, top heavy and far too bureaucratic. It takes too long to complete even simple projects and we’ve lost of sight of why our customers choose us. Despite what the corporate PR machine says, it’s clear to most that we’ve not truly integrated the Orange and T-Mobile teams or made enough improvements to our greatest asset: The network.

When the name Everything Everywhere was announced, I think it’s fair to say that we all thought that it was a bit of a mouthful but were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. The general sense was (and still is) that the name signifies something ambitious and exciting that could really make a difference to our customers lives. We felt that we could achieve something special in a commoditised and cluttered market.

But there’s one major problem – it’s just a name. We don’t have a clear, compelling strategy that explains what Everything Everywhere stands for, what our vision is, how our customers will benefit or what we need to do. At the moment ‘Everything Everywhere’ is grey, vague and ambiguous and means little to employees and nothing to our customers.

We know that we need to change from being a box-shifting telco and that Vodafone, Telefonica and Three are targeting our customers. We know that our margins are being undercut by everyone from Tesco to Lebara and we know that we have dynamic new competitors, particularly from the US and Silicon Valley. And we know that to prosper we need to offer our customers great, distinctive, personal, reliable services at the right price.

And that’s the most disappointing thing about the first year of Everything Everywhere. Twelve months ago we were warned that during change processes major organisations tended to focus in on themselves rather than the competition. And guess what happened? We focused on ourselves. We missed the opportunity to make a difference. We’ve not created a grand vision or supported it with groundbreaking offers and there’s little evidence on the ground that we recognise that the world is changing.

And as we’re a company called Everything Everywhere we need to be able to deliver on the promise implied in our name.

So here’s some advice:

1. Improve the customer experience of the network

Olaf, the network sucks. If you need proof of this try and make a call in a busy city centre or on a train. Try and get a reliable data connection or better still ask our customers about their experiences. The feedback isn’t going to be good.

Our primary job as a mobile operator has to be to help our customers communicate – to make a call, send a text or use their data connection. If we can’t do that then what are we for? This isn’t a complicated ambition – we need to improve the basic day-to-day performance of the network so that it works wherever and whenever our customers need it. If this needs more investment, more people or more projects then so be it.

Our network is the very foundation of our business and if it ain’t working, lets fix it.

2. Explain what Everything Everywhere is and it’s strategy

Any new business has a big job to do to explain what it does, what it stands for and why it exists and Everything Everywhere is no different. It’s just that most new businesses don’t have 28 million customers.

What we need is a strategy that articulates what Everything Everywhere believes in, how we’re different and that sets an ambitious direction for the business. The strategy must be exciting, creative and distinctive and fire the imagination of staff, customers and external stakeholders. The strategy should go into some detail. Not too much, just enough to help us understand what needs to be done — and to buy in to it.

If you need some advice on how to do this, just watch any of the recent Apple keynotes. They’re a great mix of product launch and future ambition, sprinkled with some Apple magic.

3. Is it one brand, two brands or three brands?

At the moment we have two and a bit consumer brands – T-Mobile, Orange and a fledgling consumer brand Everything Everywhere being launched in a limited number of retail stores (Read: Everything Everywhere to launch 30 new stores this year).

There’s plenty of people who think that trying to establish Everything Everywhere as a consumer brand will be tough but clarity on the brand strategy would allow the business to focus on what we’ll be doing in the future.

4. Innovate to compete against Apple, Google and Sky

In the 2010 at the launch of Everything Everywhere Tom Alexander identified Apple, Google and Sky as evidence of a new form of competitor. His message was clear – we’re no longer ‘just’ competing against Vodafone, Telefonica or Three but also against dynamic new companies who are faster, more creative, more confident, more willing to experiment and backed by enormous resources. Tom told us to “rampage and innovate”. Super words, unfortunately the result of this was nothing different, just more of the same.

So this time lets make a difference and actually innovate! Lets use our brand, our network and our technology to create compelling experiences that make a difference to our customers lives. We have enormous resources at our disposal – we have strong brands, great knowledge about who our customers are, what they do and where they are, we have large direct customer support and retail networks, we have a billing relationship and we subsidise huge amounts of the technology that our customers love.

We must be able to create something special from these starting points.

Yes it will be hard as we have tight budgets and our competitors are vibrant but lets ruthlessly focus our resources on a few high value, distinctive offerings that are really great for our customers and take the fight to Apple, Google and Sky.

5. Sort out the bureaucracy

Please, please do something about the bureaucracy. There’s no doubt that Everything Everywhere is a big business and needs the proper checks and balances, but the business is being hamstrung every day by the inability to get things done.

For example, even the smallest project, change or improvement has to go through ridiculously convoluted processes before anything gets done. This affects our ability to get projects to market quickly.

We certainly need to ensure that we focus on the important and most valuable projects but does this have to be at the cost of acting quickly and decisively?

We need to retain flexibility to back different ideas and we need to have the confidence to become more creative and back more horses.

We need to get a little bit more ‘Silicon Valley’ in our approach.

6. The leadership team

The top of our business is too big. There’s far too many senior managers, many of whom have overlapping responsibilities. You know that, you’ve already said it (Read: Telegraph interview). So hopefully you’ll streamline responsibilities, be clear on who does what and then let them get on with it.

Ideally we’d also bring in some fresh blood. Many of the top team are mobile operator or telco people who’ve been internally promoted. Although this is admirable we should stimulate our business with some of the worlds best talent bringing new perspectives, fresh ideas and different experience.,

7. Be visible and accessible

We’re coming out of several years where the only time anyone saw the CEO was on his way to his office or staring out of one of the companies’ many magazines.

Olaf, please be visible and accessible to your employees and allow people to have their say without feeling like they were stepping out of line. If you and your top team have the confidence to engage with employees personally you’ll be rewarded with insight, support and appreciation and they’ll follow your lead.

8. Have confidence

Everything Everywhere has many great assets. We have fantastic staff, brands that many of our customers love, customer support and retail networks that Google or Apple could only dream of and we’re highly profitable. That’s a great starting position for us to innovate and excel.

A touch of humility doesn’t go amiss. We can learn from our competitors and customers but lets back ourselves to succeed. Lets be confident, portray our ambition and excitement at the possibilities open to us and have faith that we’ll succeed.

Finally Olaf we’ll look forward to joining you on the road to Everything Everywhere’s success.

Regards
A Senior Manager

Today was my first proper go at experiencing Orange Thursdays, the new service from Orange. I’m on record as saying that this is one of the smartest moves from an operator in quite some time. Indeed, it’s a brilliant addition to the company’s hugely popular Orange Wednesdays 2-for-1 cinema ticket deal valid across the UK.

The FilmToGo service is primarily based on text messaging: You text FILMTOGO to the 85060 short code. You get a reply back with an iTunes redemption code for the movie in question. Type that into iTunes and your free movie rental will start downloading. That reply costs you 35p — so it’s not entirely free. But, as I comment in the video below, most of the UK views that as ‘free’ (or reaaaaaally cheap) on the basis that the movie rental would have cost around £3.00.

I thought I’d check out the Orange FilmToGo app. That launched recently and gives you a completely seamless experience. Click ‘download’ and you’re then presented with the unique redemption code — and then given the option to redeem it. It’s all automatic. The movie then starts downloading to your device.

Utterly brilliant. This is about as easy as it gets. Really nice work Orange.

Here’s my video of the experience:

[Now, I used SocialCam to film it on my other iPhone. Unfortunately I still haven't 'got' the way that SocialCam orients the screen. I held the iPhone in landscape mode and the video has come out sideways. Maybe it'll get corrected by the server. Sorry about that. You'll get the gist though.]

However it appears to be paying huge dividends.

Everybody who subscribes to the iTunes newsletter — and that must be a TON of people — got this in their inbox today:

Orange Thursdays promo newsletter from iTunes

Shocking. Absolutely shockingly good.

I can’t begin to think of the value that Orange is garnering from this kind of alliance with Film To Go.

Today’s movie is The Wrestler (iTunes Link). It’s got a lot of positive ratings on iTunes. I think I’ll give that one a go this week. I’ll save the £2.99 rental fee thanks to Orange — although I will be paying them £0.35 for the text I send to get the redemption code. Fair enough. Still a nice deal.

It’s also a super reminder — in your personal inbox — that Orange is looking after it’s customers with tangible free gifts. The Film To Go advertising has been running all over the iTunes desktop and mobile products for a few weeks now:

iTunes desktop screenshot

Good move Orange. Very good move.

A quick reminder for Orange customers: Get your redemption code for The Wrestler by texting FILMTOGO to 85060 (text codes cost 35p).

Screenshot of the FilmToGo microsite

It’s not often that I feel ready to pronounce good news in the mobile industry, especially when it comes to mobile operators. For the most part, mobile operators collectively have their heads in the sand. Frankly, it’s been utterly depressing to watch.

Oh, I know you’re not all bad. Collectively, you’re utter shit. Individually, though — you’re simply magnificent. I know a wide array of senior executives working at operators who have some phenomenal insight. Unfortunately, when it comes to coalescing that insight, enthusiasm, progressiveness, innovation.. well, it just never actually happens.

It makes observing the industry rather mundane at times.

Now and again, though, there are flashes of excitement. Like what Orange announced this morning. Let’s be clear, it’s not ground-breaking. I am not bowled over. If this is what passes for innovation nowadays, I remain rather despondent.

However.

However.

Credit where it’s due. So let’s get into it.

Today Orange announced that, starting this week, every Thursday, they’ll make a free movie rental available on iTunes for all their customers. There is a small cost involved — the text costs £0.35p. I think there might even be a standard network message charge on top of that (although I need to check that). However, in the context of 3-4 quid minimum for your average rental, that’s pretty good news. Up until now, the cheapest possible movie you could rent was £0.99 in the United Kingdom.

One imagines that the revenue Orange generates will count some way toward covering the cost. However it’s small fry for Orange. They get quite a lot of benefits in return.

I don’t quite know how many Orange customers are using iPhone — it’s 10pm so I am not going to phone Conor from their PR team to find out. But for the sake of argument, let’s say there’s a million Orange customers on iPhone. I reckon at least … what.. 70% of them will never have rented a movie via iTunes.

Do you think that’s fair? The figure might be even higher. I don’t think iTunes is that popular. Without a doubt, the main iTunes music service is certainly possible. Number one in the UK for electronic music downloads, if memory serves. However it’s a different story for movie downloads and movie rentals. How do we know this? Well, by process of elimination. Not once do I recall Steve Jobs standing on stage announcing the billions of movie rentals/purchases via iTunes or iPhone. I’m sure it’s sizeable. I buy at least £25 a month of movies and TV, more if there’s a good series available. So I know that some people do use iTunes as Apple intended.

I think the vast majority — the iPhone normobs (“normal mobile users”) — don’t buy that much.

In the mobile industry, in Silicon Valley, in the mobile-is-brilliant bubble, it’s difficult to remember that, actually, people don’t have that much money. There’s not a ton of discretionary spend around, especially when you start to look at the broad iPhone segment. There’s a reason o2′s iPhone population began to plateau a quite a few months before the rest of the operators were granted iPhone distribution rights. Most people who could afford an iPhone had already swapped or taken a second account on o2 to get one. Everybody else was either too unwilling to swap networks or simply couldn’t justify the expense. I think we’ve a big, big segment in the UK for whom £35/month is rather expensive but who bear the cost because, well, it’s an iPhone.

I remember the iPhone-tax (that extra £5-10 a month) being a huge barrier to quite a few surprising segments who simply couldn’t justify the extra monthly commitment just for an iPhone. These segments have later been entirely placated by the wider availability of iPhone. You can now get the iPhone 4 completely free with a 24-month commitment.

So if you run with my wholly anecdotal perspective, I reckon the majority don’t actually use iTunes beyond buying a little bit of music, some paid-for apps and perhaps the odd bit of other content.

Introducing a free movie rental every week for your iPhone is therefore utter genius. The average 23-year-old secretary (for whom the iPhone is a *big* commitment) will lap it up. I’m talking about Joe and Joanne Normal. They’ll love it. For most of them it will be their first ever exposure to downloading anything ‘cool’ like this.

It makes a lot of sense to do rentals. It won’t jam-up the customers’ 16GB iPhones. The 1-2GB files will expire 48 hours after their first viewing.

Perhaps the most exciting underlying benefit here is that a large balance of normobs are now about to indoctrinated into the movie (rental) experience. This places very nicely with Apple’s on-going iCloud strategy. It also plays beautifully for Orange who, for a long time, have been keeping cinemas in business thanks to their 2-for-1 “Orange Wednesdays” offers. For those unfamiliar with the offer, all Orange customers (contract of PAYG) get 2-for-1 film tickets on Wednesday evenings at most of the UK’s cinemas. The effects of this on-going special offer (it’s been around for years) cannot be understated. Users are required to text Orange for a special code that is redeemed at the cinema. Millions experienced ‘mobile marketing’ (or, mobile-related-commerce) for the very first time through this offer.

If you’ve ever made the mistake of going to the cinema on a Wednesday night, you’ll have seen the ridiculous crowds. The cinemas are routinely packed. Only last week I went to see Harry Potter. (I needed a bit of downtime — cinema helps me fully switch off for a few hours). It was only when I recognised the cinema was 100% full did I remember, “Shit, it’s Wednesday!” Of course it was. The place was utterly rammed.

Orange Wednesdays is available to every Orange customer, regardless of handset. Orange Thursdays requires an iPhone. Or, perhaps an iPod Touch. Or maybe even an iPad. As long as you’ve got an Orange account, you can get the redemption code, but you’ll need to use it on an Apple device. It’s clearly targeted at Orange’s iPhone customers.

There’s a further magnificent benefit for Orange: iTunes support. This afternoon I logged into iTunes and saw the Orange Thursdays offer getting pride-of-place on the iTunes store. I smiled. I have an Orange iPhone. I am ok There’s doubtless a lot of Vodafone, T-Mobile, o2 and Three customers logging into iTunes this afternoon and feeling rather bad. Orange Wednesdays can be hidden. It’s certainly a benefit that Orange does crow about, but it’s easily forgotten in the context of other mobile operator customers. Orange Thursdays though, with iTunes support… ouch. That’s going to get quite a lot of non-Orange customers frustrated. And let’s be clear, the promotion is not just on the iTunes desktop store — I just saw it now on my iPad iTunes app.

I’m most excited about the normobs though. I’m excited because this week — and every week on-going — a whole new generation of mobile consumers are being introduced to the concept of downloading and viewing movies on their phones.

Now then, I can’t say I’m that impressed with the first lot of exclusive movies. My Blueberry Nights, anyone? Apparently it’s got Norah Jones in it. Next week, though, it’s The Wrestler. I’ve heard about that one. I might well download that one myself.

Interestingly, the microsite invites you ‘download over broadband or WiFi‘.

That’s a change, eh?

I remember the day when iTunes wouldn’t let you download anything over 10mb via your operator. I wonder if Orange has put some fancy network caching to enable this? In the FAQs, however, users are advised to use WiFi.

Meanwhile it’s nice to see a move from an operator that:

a) adds value for their customers (i.e. a ‘free’ movie every week)
b) demonstrates the tech to customers who (probably) haven’t ever used it before
c) is for more than just 2 weeks — this whole thing is slated to continue ‘for the foreseeable future’
d) is actually compelling — it would have been easy to have launched some shit knock-off Orange movie store that nobody would have used. iTunes is cool.
e) and might actually get people moving to Orange as a result (or, at least, weighing heavily when it comes to moving network)

Ultimately, I think it’s seriously beneficial for Apple, especially with one eye on the upcoming iCloud. They need more and more customers to (literally) buy into the concept of mobile entertainment beyond downloading a free version of Angry Birds and the free Tesco app.

So nice one Orange. Kudos Apple.

I should point out that if you’re an Orange broadband or mobile broadband customer, the offer applies to you as well.

Anyway, what do you reckon?

This week we reminisce about the devices we’ve owned and loved over the years. We highlight a few we think were real ‘market changers’, a few lemons and speculate about who might make the next game-changer. Rafe also lets slip the secret of his magic drawers.

Amongst the devices we discuss this week are the:

• SonyEricsson P800
• Sony CMD Z5
• Nokia 6210
• O2 XDA (HTC)
• Nokia N95
• Nokia E61 and E61i
• Nokia N82
• Blackberry 7230
• iPhone 2G
• Orange SPV / HTC Canary
• Nokia 1011
• Motorola RAZR
• Nokia 5110 and 3210 with Xpress-on Covers
• Original Sidekick
• Treo 180

Episode 7 is also available on Soundcloud.

There are lots of ways to follow the podcast or you can subscribe using iTunes and other popular services.

Technical note: We’ve changed the way we serve downloads to podcast subscribers this week – this should address some recent feedback about tags and also improve audio quality. Please let us know in the comments if you have any questions or problems following the change.

I just came across this advert on the back of one of the Telegraph supplements this morning. The deal looks pretty good to me. Yes, it does require a 24-month commitment and £99 up front. But at £65 per month, you will get both the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4. I think there will be a subset of the UK market that will find this a very appealing offer. It’s good marketing from Orange. I’m really pleased to see it. Obviously if you are considering an iPhone then chances are that an iPad won’t be too far from your thoughts. And if their customers are going to buy an iPad, then why shouldn’t Orange take that revenue? And get the iPad locked on to an Orange data plan? I like it.

Two for one!

More information and ordering details here.

I filmed a quick video overview with Socialcam to show you what it’s all about. I did a semi-unboxing (I’d already switched on the phone) and then I set about messing around with the included NFC stuff. The chaps at Orange (and Barclaycard) have done a rather nice job of explaining the activation process clearly and easily. They’ve even included a series of test NFC cards to play with so you can get the idea.

The next step is to get my Barclaycard activated and go and use it. As per tonight’s post from San Diego, I’m actually out of the country this week so I’ll get stuck into Quick Tap (ideally at the local Pret in Richmond, UK) shortly.

I have to say the lure of convenience is weighing heavily upon me after having played with the Tocco. Although at £60, the Tocco is most definitely not targeted at my bleeding-edge requirements, the ability to be able to forgo the shrapnel-hunt-shuffle dance at numerous cash registers is filling me with excitement.

A few people have asked me what the difference is between the Tocco with Quick Tap support and the existing ‘PayPass enabled’ Barclaycard I already have.

Well. The answer is simple. It’s not the same.

Yes I will still carry credit cards. And I’ll still have to arse around with cash in the near-term. And, I’m sure, when the Tocco runs out of battery, it won’t be that useful for paying for stuff. But that’s not the point. No. The point for me is that being able to swipe my mobile at a pay point for the most mundane transactions will — ever so slightly — increase my quality of life. And I’m well up for that.

And an ultra quick response? The phone is usually already in my hand, the credit card is not.

Right then — here’s the video overview I made on Friday:

You know the drill, right? We’ve been hearing about this sort of use case for quite a while. If you’d like to buy a diet coke from Pret, you no longer need to fumble about with ‘shrapnel’ (i.e. coins and pieces of paper), you can finally just swipe your phone and have your account debited accordingly.

Brilliant!

As of today, you can now make contactless payments in over 50,000 shops across the UK including Pret a Manger, EAT., Little Chef, Wembley Arena, Subway, Wilkinson and McDonalds. I don’t think it will be long before we’ll see more chains offer support.

Here’s how it works.

First, you need to be an Orange customer. Check.

Second, you need a Quick Tap enabled phone. I haven’t got one of those yet. But I will go and get one. Orange has enabled their best selling handset (the Samsung Tocco Lite) with Quick Tap functionality. We’ll shortly see a whole raft of Quick Tap enabled devices from Orange. Indeed I won’t be surprised if we see the majority of their range enabled with Quick Tap in the coming quarters.

Third, you need a Quick Tap NFC-enabled SIM (which you’ll get with the Tocco).

Fourth, you do need to be a Barclaycard/Barclays customer too. Check. That’s how you top up your Quick Tap account.

Once you’ve done so, you can pay for any transaction up to the value of £15 using Quick Tap. More than enough to buy lunch for you and a few folk at Pret. You can transfer up to £100 a time from your Barclays/Barclaycard account — and you can do it all from the pre-installed Quick Tap app on your Tocco.

The app will also let you view electronic statements — plus if you’re a bit security conscious, you can opt to have to confirm every transaction you make with a PIN number.

I will not be doing that.

Oh no.

I can’t wait to get swiping.

What else do you need to know? Well, I admit that, as a geek, it’s a little bit annoying to have to use a Samsung Tocco Lite handset. I can see why Orange selected that one — £59 PAYG — but really? I don’t know if my geek quotient can handle that.

It makes sense, it really does — launching Quick Tap with a Nexus S or a top-of-the-range Samsung would severely restrict the possible audience initially.

I’m going to pop to the Orange store in Richmond later today and see if they have any in stock.

Barclaycard are giving all users a free £10 credit when they activate their Quick Tap account. That’ll get you started. It’ll also buy you lunch. Plus, you’ll get 10% cash-back on all transactions made with Quick Tap for the first three months. Nice!

It’s good news for MasterCard too. They’re managing the transaction infrastructure (“PayPass”). For extra peace of mind, all contactless transactions via Quick Tap are covered by the same 100% fraud guarantee as standard Barclays and Barclaycard transactions. Nice.

And if you’re wondering about that rather nifty new SIM you need, Gemalto are behind that. They’ve provided Barclays with Trusted Service Management (TSM) operated services which enable the secure deployment and management of mobile contactless payment.

Altogether it sounds like very serious people in sharp suits have delivered what appears to be a robust and well considered contactless payments solution.

As a first step I think this is a fantastic achievement. Good work Orange and Barclays!

I’m going to try it out and I’ll try and do a few videos of it working, it the folks in Pret will let me.

Check out the Quick Tap page for more information. And standby for the marketing onslaught!

Thanks to the reader who DM’ed me this afternoon on Twitter to highlight this page on the Orange UK website.

If you happen to be a ‘Monkey’ customer and you top up more than £5 once a month, you’ll get a whopping data allowance.

Please make sure you are not eating any cornflakes before you read the following sentence:

As a Monkey customer, you can get a free internet pass everyday through Orange World.

All you need to do is top up by £5 or more each month to be eligible for a 2MB daily allowance. That’s enough to update your Facebook status around 3 times a day.

Better than a poke in the eye, I suppose.

UK mobile operator Everything Everywhere, which is a joint venture between Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange, announced a commercial launch of a nationwide contactless mobile payments scheme in Q2 2011.

via UK: Everything Everywhere announces first commercial NFC rollout during Q2 2011.

Good work Everything Everywhere. I’m looking forward to buying a sandwich from Pret with my handset. Bring it ON!

So it’s no surprise to see that Orange has partnered closely with Microsoft to deliver two new devices to market featuring Windows Phone 7.

Orange will be carrying the HTC Mozart and the Samsung Omnia 7 and they’ll be hitting stores by the 21st of October. They’ve also worked hard to deliver some additional Orange-related services that you’ll find pre-installed:

- Orange Wednesdays: 2-4-1 cinema ticket app – allowing you to read reviews, watch trailers as well as redeem 2-4-1 voucher all from your handset
- Orange Maps: Your personal navigation system, offering turn-by-turn GPS guidance
- Your Orange: to help you keep up-to-date and manage your Orange account – access help articles and get the latest info on your Magic Numbers
- Orange Daily: Bringing you a selection of at-a-glance news, sport and weather content as well as extras such as Wikipedia

Here’s the Samsung:

Meanwhile, the Samsung Omnia 7, featuring a 4.0″ Super AMOLED touch screen, 1 GHz processor will be available for free to customers who take out a £40 per month, 24 month price plan. The package includes 1200 any network call minutes, unlimited text, unlimited email, sat nav with Orange Maps as well as inclusive anytime internet browsing.

Here’s the HTC Mozart:

With a 3.7” WVGA resolution, Super LCD Display, 8 mega-pixel camera, Dolby sound and a 1GHz Processor, the HTC 7 Mozart, exclusive to Orange, is available for free to customers who take out a £35 per month 24 month price plan. The package includes 600 any network call minutes, unlimited text, unlimited email, sat nav with Orange Maps as well as inclusive anytime internet browsing.

More information? Keep watching http://shop.orange.co.uk/.

Here’s Conor from Orange UK showing off the latest HTC Mozart device that’s hitting the UK on the 21st of October. It’s a useful video overview of the basic Windows Phone user interface. See what you think:

Orange have re-jigged their iPhone pricing strategy making the device range much more accessible.

Most members of the UK public come out in spots when they’re told they have to pay for a phone.  It’s because we’ve had a decade or so of free goodies from the mobile operators in return for long term contract commitment.

I can always spot the surprised customer standing in a Carphone Warehouse store wondering why despite agreeing to a 24-month contract, they still have to stump up cold, hard cash for their Jesus Phone.

Today, Orange has made it a little easier.  You can now pick up an iPhone 4 16GB on a 24-month £50/month contract entirely free.

Free.

Yes you’re committing to pay £50 x 24.  But nobody cares.  Nobody cares as long as the phone is free.

So I predict that Orange will begin to sell a lot more at that price-point.  At the super-sweet spot of £35/month, the 16GB version still costs £119 — enough to dent the monthly budgets of most employees.

The company’s also brought their iPhone plan strategy into line with their wider pay-monthly pricing.  So if for example you agree to take less bundled minutes, you can qualify for a photo messaging bundle, Orange Maps & Navigation or more inclusive data.    That will appeal to many.

The key for me, though, is that the iPhone is now available at a heck of a lot more price points from £30-£75 and on 18 or 24 month price plans.

And if you’d like a top-of-the-range 32GB iPhone 4, stump up £75 per month and the phone will cost you a measly £29… The good news is that, at this price point, you aren’t billed for anything, basically.   Unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, 1GB data, 3GB tethering allowance, 20MB roaming data (per month, I think).  Again, that’s going to appeal to heavy users.

I’m sure we’ll see some updates from the other operators soon.

[My upgrade from 3GS to iPhone 4 with Orange was ridiculously simple.  I logged in online, the order process took perhaps 180 seconds and the iPhone arrived the next morning.  And the activation (swapping my 3GS sim to the iPhone 4 microsim) was painless.  I phoned the automatic activation line and boom, my iPhone was working within 15 minutes.]

Get thee to the Orange Online shop.

Well, it seems Orange is likely to follow suit. I heard yesterday from a source at Orange who, on condition of anonymity, explained that we should expect revised data plans sometime soon (“over the summer”).

It’s a sad state of affairs, it really is.

The mobile operators screwed up the introduction of mobile data in the first place and now they’re having to change things around… again. I remember having an ‘unlimited’ T-Mobile data account back in 2006 that was truly unlimited. Because they didn’t have the technology in place to track my data usage. I think I had about 9 months worth of unmetered access until they sent me a letter to tell me they’d finally bought and installed the right kit to measure my usage.

We have this expectation, for some reason, that the mobile operators should know what they’re doing. This much is true when it comes to voice (and SMS). Beyond these key services, the operators haven’t been truly comfortable with mobile data since it was £5/megabyte. If they can’t meter it and charge by the second/minute/message/megabyte, they feel naked.

Conversely, the average consumer doesn’t have a sodding clue what 1MB means in terms of usage. Is that 20 minutes worth of IM chat? Or is that actually only 2 minutes worth of chat and an 800k picture exchange? There’s no indicator on the handset that shows a little battery-style meter filling up across the month indicating your data usage. Why not? You’d think that mobile operators should have agreed a common API that any handset can use so that consumers can query their data usage directly from the network.

Well, you’d think.

The technology and services exist. Most operators haven’t gone anywhere near implementing it though. Which makes it incredibly difficult to know whether, on an average rainy Tuesday, whether you’re hitting 100MB of usage or 500MB.

Oh it’ll be nice to get a text message notification. But really, is this the peak of the technological innovation of our mobile operators? A text message when you’ve got to 450MB? Puhhh-leeeeze.

The big risk is with these pricing strategies is that consumers literally switch off.

Back in 2006, the biggest issue for developers wasn’t discovery. No. It was data usage. Most consumers had experimented with data in some form or another (e.g. downloading a ringtone or a screensaver) and had got bill shock. I remember asking people why they had a 5 megapixel camera and never uploaded them or used any applications. The overwhelming answer was because they didn’t know how much it would cost. So they simply didn’t bother. They got on with their lives and used bluetooth to send the photos to their PC. Or didn’t bother taking the photos off their phones.

We’ve only just got over that. I hope we’re not set to go that way again.

Here’s the video — and remember, if you’re viewing on an iPad or iPhone, the video will play right-away thanks to our gorgeous new HTML5 video support update.

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

And if you’d like to see some more pics, here’s the Rio Flickr gallery I created.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I’ve just begun using the device so I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

- – - – -

ORANGE AND T-MOBILE UNVEIL JOINT VENTURE NAME, TEAM, VISION AND PLANS
Companies outline vision to give customers instant access to everything, everywhere

Everything Everywhere: One company, running two of Britain’s most famous brands – Orange and T-Mobile
Best for customers: Scale of new company allows delivery of best value, best choice, best coverage and best quality in the industry
Biggest Network: Plans for a single super-network that will give bigger and better coverage for customers, with a smaller impact on the environment
Benefits begin this year: Roaming across both networks due later this year, at no additional cost to the customer
Boost for Sales: Biggest operator retail presence on the high street with over 700 stores today
Brilliant Service: Focus on quality, to ensure customers receive the very best service, helping people discover more from their mobile
Acceleration in new markets: New assault on business market, continued leadership in wholesale, and focus on new revenue streams
One Team: New Leadership Team announced to take the company forward

London. 11 May 2010. Britain’s biggest communications company was unveiled today, promising to transform the industry and give UK consumers the best coverage, devices, service and communications experience possible.

The company – called Everything Everywhere – will run two of Britain’s most famous brands, Orange and T-Mobile, and has a customer base of 30 million people: over half of the UK adult population.

Orange and T-Mobile will continue as leading brands in the market, with each brand having its own shops, marketing campaigns, propositions and service centres. However, behind the scenes, the two brands will be run by one company, with one team and one vision to give consumers instant access to the people, places and things they want, wherever they are.

Everything Everywhere is the name of the company that runs Orange and T-Mobile, and the company that all 16,500 employees will work for. The company will be officially integrated on July 1.

Tom Alexander, Chief Executive of Everything Everywhere, said: “Together, we are Britain’s biggest communications company, with over 30 million customers.

“We are on the verge of a communications revolution. Up until a few years ago, mobile was just about voice and text – not now. Multimedia phones have already started to change the way our customers access the world – for entertainment, education, information – wherever they are, whenever they want.

“That is why, through our scale and Britain’s only super-network with its unsurpassed coverage and capacity, we will be leading this revolution, giving customers instant access to everything, everywhere.

“We are Everything Everywhere – it’s our name, our vision, and our ambition – and we run two of the UK’s biggest brands Orange and T-Mobile. It’s our vision to give our customers instant access to everything everywhere, opening up a world of endless possibilities.”

FURTHER INFORMATION

The brands
Everything Everywhere will give the two trading brands of Orange and T-Mobile a shared platform of strength, with each brand owning clear emotional territory in terms of propositions, marketing and brand identity.

To customers, Orange and T-Mobile will continue to compete as distinct brands in the market, each having its own shops, campaigns, propositions and service centres.

Best network
Everything Everywhere is creating the country’s biggest and best mobile network. The ambition is to combine both the Orange and T-Mobile networks, cut out duplication, and create a single super-network.

For customers it will mean bigger network and better coverage, while reducing the number of stations and sites – which is good for cost reduction as well as being good for the environment.

Later this year, customers will experience the first benefits of the merger, with the ability to roam across both networks at no additional cost.

Boost for sales
Together Orange and T-Mobile have over 700 stores on the British high street today. The company is now looking at continuing to improve and evolve its estate to generate more sales and cement its position as the UK’s number one communications company.

Brilliant service
It is an ambition of Everything Everywhere to deliver the best service in the industry to the company’s 30 million customers across both brands.

The company intends to do that by offering an excellent level of service, with the best-trained and motivated people helping customers.

Acceleration in new markets
The company intends to propel itself beyond mobile communications, with a greater focus in developing new revenue streams based on the way customers will use their devices in the future.

With greater scale, the company intends to develop new revenue streams in adjacent markets, such as mobile advertising and mobile commerce.

With the company’s new coverage and scale, it also intends to ramp up offers to the business market, with the best propositions and value for businesses across Britain.

One Team
There is a new Leadership Team for Everything Everywhere, with key personnel from both Orange and T-Mobile running key areas of the enlarged business.

The team is led by Tom Alexander, Chief Executive, and Richard Moat, Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Chief Executive.
Joining them in the Leadership Team, are:
Andrew Ralston, Chief Commercial Officer
Guillaume van Gaver, Vice President of Marketing
Mark Duncan, Vice President of Sales & Loyalty
Andrew Coull, Vice President of Retail
Pippa Dunn, Vice President of Orange Propositions
Lysa Hardy, Vice President of T-Mobile Propositions
Gerry McQuade, Chief Development Officer
Marc Overton, Vice President of Wholesale
Martin Stiven, Vice President of Business
Bruno Duarte, Vice President of Home
Russel Taylor, Vice President of Business Development and Online
Neal Milsom, Vice President of Finance
Emin Gurdenli, Vice President of Network
Fotis Karonis, Vice President of IT
Jackie O’Leary, Vice President of Customer Operations
Rui Pereira, Vice President of the Programme Management Office
John Cromack, Vice President of Purchasing
Linda Kennedy, Chief Change Officer
Ian Pitcher, Vice President of People Operation
Nicolas Ott, Vice President of Strategy, Planning and Regulatory
Steven Day, Vice President of Brands and Communications
James Blendis, Vice President of Legal
Ben Messore, Vice President of Strategy

Yeah… it’s precisely what I’d have done. It’s a winning strategy. An absolute winning strategy, whether the company truly did screw things up or not. You really do have to admire them.

They know if you actually want an iPad right now, you’ll order it from the States. Of course they do. But the fact that they’ve delayed it has made Twitterlines (“Twitter-headlines”) all afternoon resulting in a ton of coverage. Even The London Telegraph saw fit to announce the delay on the top of their site, ‘above the fold’.

At the same time, of course, behind the scenes this morning, frantic phone calls and emails were zipping between Apple’s Mission Control and Vodafone, o2 and Orange. Apple famously approve everything to do with the mobile operator’s marketing and public relations announcements and they strictly enforce it. Which is why, this afternoon, I got this from Vodafone:

Vodafone today announced that it will offer dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

The iPad lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch user interface.

For more information about iPad please visit www.apple.com/ipad.

And this from o2:

O2 today announced that it will offer dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May in the UK.

The iPad lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch user interface.

For more information about iPad please visit www.apple.com/ipad.

I shit ye not. Even the apostrophe in the second paragraph is the same style indicating it’s been cut’n'pasted from Apple approved master release.

What about Orange? What did they have to say? Well, curiously, it was exactly the same…

Orange today announced that it will offer dedicated iPad price plans for all models from the end of May (in France, UK, Spain and Switzerland).

The iPad lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch user interface.

For more information about iPad please visit www.apple.com/ipad.

This kind of stage management is simply phenomenal to witness.

So, in case you didn’t already know: The iPad UK/European launch is delayed. And those operators will be offering ‘price plans’ for the iPad.

What kind of price plans? That information isn’t available at this time.

How much will the price plans be? That information isn’t available at this time.

What price will the iPad be in the UK? That information isn’t available at this time.

This does however mean that if you’re a mobile developer, you’ve got another 30 odd days worth of development time before the Great Unwashed gets hold of the iPads here in the UK.