Can they change orange?

Mobile Today a trade magazine for the Mobile retail sector last week published an excellent feature on just how can Orange once again be bright. This is a question that has challenged a number of friends of Orange over the last few years.

What once made Orange stand out was excellent Customer Service, this lead has been lost as others have improved whilst FT has cut costs. I have to say that the last nine months have seen me contact the Executive team too often in getting issues resolved.

The next problem is one of innovation, just what does Orange now stand for? I want a mobile experience that makes my life easier, something the aspired to with the launch of Wildfire. Today I have Caller Tunes and Music Player.

In terms of network, I am very glad that we have had a heatwave this year as without it I would not be able to get a signal in summer time because I have too many trees between me and the 3g base station. When it rains I cannot get a single at home, so I guess the solution could be that someone in customer service calls me and gets me to switch to Orange broadband. Then perhaps I can make calls over a pico cell in my house and at least have some form of conectivity.

I have to say that I for one have little confidence that Ghillebaert can effect a turnaround of the UK operation. I think one of the biggest issues is low staff morale, which has got worse thanks to yet another round of job cuts. No amount of marketing can help make that better in the short term. Perhaps he can look at what is happening in Germany and decide that what we need is some of the E plus magic rather than a bunch of Animal tarrifs!