Orange is hoping to revive its standing in the UK broadband market by merging its fixed-line network with the country’s fixed-line incumbent operator BT. According to a report in The Times, the deal is the first significant decision taken by Tom Alexander in his new role as head of the recently completed Orange UK/T-Mobile UK merger and is aimed at turning round the operator’s ailing fixed-line broadband business in the country. By piggy-backing on BT’s network, Orange UK’s fixed-line network will be expanded to cover the entire country, up from about 65 percent population coverage currently. Around 61 staff will be transferred to BT as part of the agreement. According to the report, Orange is the UK’s fifth-largest broadband provider but has lost ground recently to rivals such as Virgin Media, TalkTalk and BT itself. Orange has had the business under review for ten months and had reportedly considered abandoning the market altogether. 

Orange UK’s fixed-line broadband customer base fell below the 1 million mark last year for the first time in a decade and lost almost £80 million last year, despite generating nearly £200 million of revenue. The business had once been the market leader in its previous incarnation as Freeserve prior to being acquired by Orange parent France Telecom in 2000. Bruno Duarte, Orange’s vice-president of strategy, told The Times that it had decided to take the drastic step of outsourcing its network to make providing broadband commercially viable. “We are not satisfied with where we stand with broadband, as our customer base is declining and our performance is poor. But we need to remain in fixed-line broadband so decided to fundamentally change what we are doing,” he said, arguing that the company’s problems relate to its aging infrastructure. The deal with BT mirrors a similar deal that rival Vodafone has in place with the UK incumbent.