The UK Mobile Phone Blog

Orange to offer converged services

Orange will unveil its “converged” fixed and mobile phone service today, allowing customers to use a mobile handset to make unlimited calls through their broadband home internet connection.Unique, to be launched in Britain later this year, will be available to customers who take an Orange mobile and broadband contract. The cost of the service is expected to be based on the company’s range of “animal” tariffs. The phone, which connects to Orange’s mobile network, as well as Livebox - which is used by many of its one million UK broadband customers to access the web - will be free.

The Orange service will use the next generation of wi-fi phones. But the actual mobility of consumers will be hampered by technological constraints. While the handset can easily make calls on either the mobile network or wi-fi, there is no “handover” between the two. As a result, anyone starting a call at home and then, say, getting in their car and plugging the phone into their hands-free kit and driving off, will find that the call ends when they leave the coverage of their home internet connection.