Orange Has Won!
09.21.07 - 01:34pm
The iPhone is the first cell-phone in history to raise enough fervor that carriers fight over who has the rights to sell it. The negotiations in Europe have been rife in the news for months. Today it was announced that France Telecom’s Orange is the winner in France.
“We have signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone,” France Telecom’s spokeswoman.
She said the iPhone will be launched in November but did not give a specific launch date. It is likely the launch will coincide with the Nov. 9th launch in the UK and Germany.
She also did not give a specific cost of the iPhone although she did say it would not be subsidized.
The iPhone runs best on Wi-Fi as the EDGE network is rather slow. France Telecom has more than 2,000 paid Wi-Fi hotspots in Paris alone making it a prime candidate for the phone which has the best web browser ever seen in a phone. The iPhone runs best on Wi-Fi as the EDGE network it runs on otherwise is rather slow in comparison. In addition there are several hundred more Wi-Fi hotspots in Paris, many of them offered by the city for free. (Basically France is a great place for the iPhone!)
T-mobile clinched the iPhone in Germany and will be selling the iPhone there for 399 euros ($588 U.S.). 02 clinched it in the UK, selling it for 269 pounds ($583.3 U.S.).
Speak Your Peace