If France Telecom has been operating in France for much longer, the Orange brand is more recent. Launched 30 years ago, it has taken on enormous importance in France, but not only that.
The story of the Orange brand begins in the United Kingdom. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Hutchison Whampoa group, which owns the Rabbit mobile network, mandated Hans Snook across the Channel to close this declining subsidiary. But he decides to bring it back to life under a new identity. Orange was launched on April 28, 1994. However, it was not until 2000 that France Telecom, the historic operator in France, bought the brand.
Thus, Wanadoo and Ma Ligne TV became Orange, six years later. France Telecom quickly became a leader in its market thanks to the quality of its networks and placed all of the Group’s subsidiaries under the same name. As of 2009, Orange is present in more than 30 countries with more than 123 million customers. Then it was in 2013 that the entire group took the name fruit. France Telecom no longer exists in public, but the French telephone network owes a lot to the operator’s historic installations, which subsequently enabled the growth of mobile telephony, at the dawn of the birth of a new revolution. : Internet.
If Orange had its moment of glory when it landed on the French market, it is far from being confined there, with a presence in 26 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and even in more than 200 countries in which Orange Business is present. It is now the second most valuable telecoms brand in Europe and even the third most valuable French brand in the world according to the Brand Finance ranking of the 500 most powerful global brands for the year 2024.
This article was reprinted on the Univers FreeBox website
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