Orange is to cut 450 management jobs, open 60 new shops and restore its call centres to the UK as part of a strategic shake-up of the mobile and broadband company.
Tom Alexander, the new chief executive, who was brought in by France Telecom at the end of last year to revive the flagging brand, laid out plans yesterday to put Orange back on top. In an effort to rekindle Orange's reputation for customer service, the former chief executive of Virgin Mobile is eliminating 450 back-office jobs from the company's 12,500 staff and is creating 500 frontline roles - 100 in Orange's British call centres and 400 in retail.
Mr Alexander is also halting the company's call centre expansion in India and said that call centres would be brought back home gradually as he put British customer service at the heart of the new strategy.
Orange is widely thought to have lost its lustre since the group was bought by France Telecom in 2000. Once regarded as a cutting-edge brand, with 15.8 million mobile customers, Orange lags behind the other Three original UK mobile operators, o2 (now Sky), Vodafone and T-Mobile. In an attempt to retain its broadband customers - Orange lost 35,000 customers in the six months to the end of March - Mr Alexander plans to integrate further the mobile and broadband businesses and to invest in a high-speed broadband network, as well as expanding its present 2G network.
Orange also plans to launch a range of totally connected products this year, including laptops that link to the internet both at home and on the move, hoping to capitalise on the rapidly expanding mobile broadband market. He has also signed a deal with Carphone Warehouse to provide Orange Sim cards for the retailer's laptops.
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