Orange reveals digital media boom

• Phenomenal surge in mobile data - dongle data usage increasing by 4,125% in twelve months
• Entertainment services reach an all time high - music and video downloads both increasing by 38%
• The popularity of social networking sites soar - a 129% increase in monthly page impressions and a 48% increase in monthly unique users

Orange today unveiled its fifth Digital Media Index, a detailed report offering insight into customer consumption of digital media. The latest findings reveal an explosion in data usage which has more than doubled on mobile handsets and dongles, bringing the monthly total to over 386 thousand gigabytes. The report reveals that people are increasingly capitalising on the convenience, ease and flexibility of being able to connect wherever and whenever they want.

Key findings on mobile data consumption include:

• Dongle data usage increased by 4,125% in twelve months
• Dongle subscriptions surged by over 504%
• Mobile handset data usage increases by 108%

Advances in handset technology coupled with new price plans are making the mobile internet more accessible to many. In addition to this, customers are engaging with the content they want quicker and easier than before. These developments have meant Orange witnessed a record high in mobile media usage - despite the current economic climate.

Paul Jevons, Director of Products, Portals and Services for Orange, said: “The Orange Digital Media Index shows that the ‘mobile data era’ has truly arrived. Customers are repeatedly enjoying the intuitive and seamless mobile internet experience to access a greater quantity and quality of content that is designed specifically for the mobile portal – whether that’s music, videos or games – helping to drive consumer traffic. An explosion in the number of mobile applications and new embedded laptops will boost mobile data demand even further in the coming months.”

Other Key Findings

Popularity of Entertainment Services

Orange has also seen a huge upsurge across all our entertainment services throughout the festive period. Consumers typically have more time over the holiday season to enjoy downloading their favourite content on their mobile handset – whether that be music, games or videos – which can then be shared with family and friends.

Other key findings on our entertainment services include:

• Music downloads surge – with 38% increase
• Video downloading escalates – with an increase of 38%
• Mobile gaming rises – with an increase of 8% in the number of games downloaded

Ongoing Surge in Social Networking

The number of customers accessing social networking sites via their mobile phone has also substantially increased, with unique users rising by almost 50% since the last report. This can partially be explained by people repeatedly logging on to receive and send seasonal greeting messages, and using high quality camera phones to send festive pictures, and check status updates whilst on the move over the holiday period.

Other key findings on social networking include:

• 129% increase in monthly page impressions
• 48% increase in monthly unique users
• 53% increase in the average number of pages per user, per month

Paul Jevons said: “We’ve seen an enormous increase in data usage across all our entertainment and communication services, including internet, email, multimedia messaging, music downloads, photo uploads, and gaming. It is clear that innovative, exciting and accessible content for the mobile platform is increasing the popularity of mobile services which are embedded on handsets or downloaded through applications stores.”

- Ends -

About The Orange Digital Media Index The Orange Digital Media Index is a detailed report looking at usage patterns across Orange’s entertainment and communications services to show how consumer habits are changing. Figures in this report cover December 2008 – February 2009, as compared to the fourth Orange Digital Media Index which covered the three month period from July – September 2008.

About Orange

Orange is the key brand of the France Telecom Group, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. With 123 million customers, the Orange brand now covers Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the Group operates.

At the end of 2008, France Telecom had consolidated sales of 53.5 billion euros (12.7 billion euros for the first quarter of 2009) and at 29 April 2009, the Group had a customer base of almost 184 million customers in 30 countries. These include 123 million mobile customers worldwide and 13 million broadband Internet (ADSL) customers in Europe. Orange is the number three mobile operator and the number one provider of broadband Internet services in Europe and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.

In the UK, Orange provides high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population. At the end of March 2009, Orange had almost 17 million customers in the UK – 15.8 million active mobile customers and close to one million fixed broadband customers.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Personal Communications Services Limited.

For more information: www.orange.com, www.francetelecom.com, www.orange-business.com

For further information, call the Orange press office on 0870 373 1500 or email: Orangepr@golinharris.com.