Is it time to subscribe to a printer service from HP?

Ever since my dad brought home an...

What’s the best way of buying a phone today?

How did you buy your latest phone?...

MWC: What device highlights did you miss?

So, early last week I predicted that...

Get a landline redirect with Orange Pocket Landline for £10/month

Screen Shot 2011 10 21 at 17 53 51

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?

9 COMMENTS

  1. Didn’t Orange offer this in the early days too? Remember? When the words ‘Orange’ & ‘innovative’ were synonymous? When Hans Snook ruled the roost? Ah yes, mobile comms was so much less cynical then.

  2. I recently arrange for a SIM only business plan with Orange, intending to take out the Pocket Land-line because right now using Skype as a land-line is worse than bad due to the awful voice quality. But you know, because it seems like the whole operational process at EverythingEverywhere is last century, I still haven’t done that.
    I had to wait for more than an hour to get such a simple account set up in store (Hampstead branch), and during that time there were two miserable women trying to do something incredibly basic with their blackberries, but the assistants were stuck on the phone trying to get it done for them… their whole infrastructure is behind and failing them.

    I have yet to get Pocket Landline because I have to call 343 and request it myself, and frankly I thought “why should I pay them more money if they don’t take care of their customers?” So I’m holding it off until the need really arises.

  3. Here’s an update.

    I called on Tuesday to get this set up. It took a very short time to get through to someone to talk to, which is a surprise and very pleasant, too. I expected to waste half an hour doing the set up for pocket landline, but it took no more than 5 minutes. The only downside was that I wanted to get a bit more information out of her as to how the whole process will work, and got some vague reply “Umm, in a couple of days someone will get back to you…” since I wasn’t in a rush I didn’t bother asking further and just thought I’d wait. Other companies though? They’d want to bypass this annoying bureaucracy that Orange is known for these days. Their website should be more transparent as to how all of this works!

    Today 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!

    To summarise, the product seems like an excellent idea and it might be well executed. But of course there’s the slightly old fashioned way of getting it to work that I hope they’ll bypass in the future. Maybe they just don’t care for people to do all of this online and prefer it when we call. I have to get used to the notion, because doing everything online is the society norm these days 🙂

  4. Glad to share the experience!

    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.

    So it essentially is semi-pocket-landline!

  5. Hi Dmitri, 

    I spoke with Orange and Vodafone about this service. Vodafone’s service has a default that when you call out your mobile number will be displayed, however, if you prefix the number you are calling with ‘121’ then your landline number will be displayed. 

    Initial thoughts are that you can call the Mrs when you’re on the golf course and she’ll assume you’re busy working at home 😀

    I didn’t ask Orange if this was a feature of Pocket Landline as it’s not a deal maker for me. The real benefit for me is that I divert all my other landline calls to my mobile during the day, now they’ll be diverted to a landline and so I’ll save the difference on every call I recieve. It’s going to save me around £1000 this year, I’m astonished how good this could be 

  6. After attempting twice to get the ‘Pocket Landline’, only being told ‘you need to buy a new phone’ (already have 3 business sim only contacts) and later talking to what I would describe as the ‘village idiot in residence’ at Orange, I call the ‘handset upgrade’ people instead – he disagreed with the other two, said I could order the service but…. there were no more London numbers… when it was pointed out that Ofcom can allot more numbers… there was no comment..
    what a bunch of fools manage orange.. 3 calls to discover its a waste of time

    EE = extra eejets

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recently Published

Is it time to subscribe to a printer service from HP?

Ever since my dad brought home an HP LaserJet printer (version 3, if memory serves), I have been printing with an HP. Over the...

What’s the best way of buying a phone today?

How did you buy your latest phone? I'm asking because I'm thinking about what I should be doing. When I was living in Oman, I...

MWC: What device highlights did you miss?

So, early last week I predicted that next to nothing from Mobile World Congress would break through into the mainstream media. I was right,...

How Wireless Will Pave the Path to Neobank Profitability

I'm delighted to bring you an opinion piece from Rafa Plantier at Gigs.com. I think it's particularly relevant given the recent eSIM news from...

An end of an era: Vodafone UK turns off 3G services

I thought it was worthwhile highlighting this one from the Vodafone UK team. For so long - for what feels like years, seeing the...

Mobile World Congress: Did the mainstream media notice?

I resolved this year to make sure I wrote something - anything - about Mobile World Congress, the huge mobile industry trade show taking...