A brief history of the UK mobile telecoms market for the uninitiated

BT created Cellnet, which became BT Cellnet and, as part of BT Wireless, was spun off and listed as mmO2, operating as O2. Later O2 was bought by Telefonica (of Spain).

Then there were Vodafone, Orange and Mercury.

Vodafone was born from Racal, a UK maker of military radio technology.

Orange was launched by Hutchison Whampoa (of Hong Kong). Later it was sold to Mannesmann (of Germany). Vodafone acquired Mannesmann and then sold Orange to France Telecom (of France, of course).

Mercury was a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless. It became One2One and was then sold off to T-Mobile (of Germany) and rebranded T-Mobile.

In the meantime, 3 was set up by Hutchison Whampoa.

Then Orange UK merged with the UK division of T-Mobile to create EE.

Telefonica has put O2 up for sale. BT was in the running but has just acquired EE instead. Hutchison Whampoa is in the running for O2. The O2 network in Ireland has already been acquired by Hutchison Whampoa and merged with 3.

Still Sceptical about Twitter?

So you're still sceptical of the value of Twitter? Well, these are three little anecdotes from my life on Twitter. They're all very fresh and recent.

1. The Apples

Cover of Buzzin' About

Here I am, sitting at my laptop, my fingers tapping in rhythm to an album I've just downloaded from iTunes. The album is Buzzin' About by The Apples. Do you know them? The Israeli band that dub themselves "a mixing pot of funk, hip hop, big band jazz, rock and turntablism – all delivered in their energetic and off-kilter style". Whatever you call it, I love this kind of acid-jazz-funk trip.


I've been using music streaming service Spotify for a few weeks now. Occasionally, I bash a search into its engine to find something 'new' to listen to. I've run searches looking for tracks with the words 'coffee' and 'chocolate' in the titles. This evening I wondered if there was a band called The Apples and what it would be like. One word. Nice.

Too bad for you if you like the sound of Spotify and aren't a registered user. You need to buy premium membership (and so avoid the ads) or somehow get an invite. The service loses money. With each additional user it loses more money. The cost of streaming is greater than the revenue it gets from ads. I got my invite from Milo Yiannopoulos. As a tech writer (formerly of TechCrunch Europe), he had some invites to spare and was touting them on Twitter...

2. FreshCase

I had a delivery on Friday afternoon from FreshCase. In the cardboard package were two FreshCase wine boxes of Hardy's Nottage Hill, one white, one red.

I heard about FreshCase from Christian Payne (aka Documentally), who referes to himself as "a freelance mobile media maker who also specialises in Social Media & photography" on his website OurManInside.com. He wrote about FreshCase on his blog. He said they were offering free wine to bloggers, who'd try them out and write about them. I'll be doing that shortly.

To receive the delivery, it was necessary to follow FreshCase on Twitter and take up the offer on Twitter. Within a few minutes, I was being followed by Sarah Belizaire-Butler, who sent me a direct message to arrange delivery.

Incidentally, Documentally, was one of the first people I came across on Twitter. About a year ago, he'd made a comment about Zattoo on Twitter and I was tracking all mentions of Zattoo at the time. I'd seen the link to his blog on Friday morning on Twitter. A few hours later I had four and a half litres of wine delivered to my door. Free.

3. All play and no work?

Well, no, that's not the case. I mentioned already how I was keeping an eye on what people were saying about Zattoo. However, Twitter isn't just about what's said on the service.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the OSCR project, the initiative from Orange with NESTA, to pull in ideas from small businesses. They're looking to create services that heighten the experience of being an Orange customer. Orange have Orange Wednesdays and O2 have their concert tickets. They're competing on experience now, not minutes and pricing, as they did in the 1990s and early 2000s.

I went along to the OSCR presentation and met some people from Orange, also the co-founder of Worldeka and the founder of Intruders.tv, amongst others. Then I came back home and after mulling it over for a few days, sent in my application. We'll see what comes of that.

OSCR might, or might not, radically alter how TV Pixie progresses in 2010. I found out about it on Twitter.


So, what are you up to? any plans for dinner? what are you going to have for breakfast in the morning?

And if a journalist - or anybody else, for that matter - doesn't get it, please just send them this way.

Updated: Orange launches startup competition with NESTA #OSCR

How does one of the world's biggest mobile telecoms companies, with 180,000 employees worldwide, remain innovative in a market that risks becoming commoditised?

This is the challenge that Orange is facing and why today they launch the OSCR ("Oscar") Project at NESTA's headquarters in central London.

Back in the 90s, Orange was the quirky mobile phone company that launched with the inspiring tag line "The Future's Bright, The Future's Orange".

Then, about ten years ago, they were acquired by Mannesmann of Germany, which in turn was bought by Vodafone. The EU Commission then forced it to divest Orange and France Telecom ended up the eventual owner.

Orange has a multitude of venturing programs. The OSCR project is a way for Orange to tap into the creativity of the UK tech scene, to develop services for great customer experience in order to deliver significant revenue back to Orange, all the while protecting the IP of the companies taking part.

Mark Watts-Jones, Head of Product Marketing at Orange, gave the example of Orange Wednesdays as one of the ways in which customer relationships are strengthened. Orange is looking for other similar cross-platform (mobile/web/TV) services that develop communities, enhance messaging or offer personalisation, amongst other opportunities.

How it works

In a nutshell, companies have until next Friday 12:00 AM on 6th November to submit an application in response to the brief. The applications are then reviewed, not by Orange, but by a third party 'Trusted Agent Team' consisting of NESTA, live | work and Wireless Innovation.

Ten days later, five to ten companies will be selected to share in £100,000 to prepare to pitch to Orange. The companies will then work with Orange over the next 90 days to determine whether a commercial partnership can be agreed.

After that, well, the future's bright.

Full details of the programme, including slides and videos from today's launch event will be available on the OSCR project website as of tomorrow.