Orange Polska
Encyclopedia
Orange is the brand name of Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
network operator, PTK Centertel.
The company was founded in December 1991 to operate an analog (first-generation
1G
1G refers to the first-generation of wireless telephone technology, mobile telecommunications. These are the analog telecommunications standards that were introduced in the 1980s and continued until being replaced by 2G digital telecommunications...
) network under the Centertel brand. It launched Idea, Poland's third GSM network, in 1998, operating on both the 900 and 1800-MHz bands from the beginning. Until 2001, when the analog network was switched off, Idea was known as Idea Centertel, and former analog customers were offered GSM contracts. Idea's slogan was Łączy Cię z ludźmi (Connects you with people).
Idea adopted the Orange brand name in 2005, although the operating company is still formally known as PTK Centertel. It, along with parent company Telekomunikacja Polska S.A., is controlled by France Télécom
France Télécom
France Telecom S.A. is the main telecommunications company in France, the third-largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It currently employs about 180,000 people and has 192.7 million customers worldwide . In 2010 the group had revenue of €45.5 billion...
, which owns the worldwide mobile telephony operator Orange SA
Orange SA
Orange is the brand used by France Télécom for its mobile network operator and Internet service provider subsidiaries. It is the fifth largest telecom operator in the world, with 210 million customers . The brand was created in 1994 for Hutchison Telecom's UK mobile phone network, which was...
. The brand change took place all at once on 19 September 2005. The company sponsored a free concert in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
by British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
musician Sting on 24 September 2005 for 150,000 of its clients to publicize the changeover.
The company also operates WLAN
Wireless LAN
A wireless local area network links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method , and usually providing a connection through an access point to the wider internet. This gives users the mobility to move around within a local coverage area and still be connected to the network...
, UMTS network in Poland, has the biggest mobile tv streaming offer (35 channels, 20k VOD files for mobile) and as a part of Mobile TV consortium is planning to launch mobile TV in DVB-H.
Available brands of Orange Poland:
- POP (Point Of Purchase), the name of its prepaid service from the Idea days,
- Orange Go - the prepaid offer introduced with the launch of Orange brand
- Orange Music- first on the market prepaid offer linked to value added music services
- Orange Free / Business Everywhere - wireless internet offer
- Orange Freedom - internet access based on WLR
- Orange World - the biggest multimedia WAP portal in Poland - for Orange customers only [wap.orange.pl]
Orange in Poland acquired its 14-millionth customer at the end of December, 2007.