MSN, Mobile Centric, Mobisud

In the latest Orange - Microsoft deal, France Telecom's DNA prevailed over Hans Snook's. France Telecom the incumbent and former monopoly, not France Telecom, the brilliant innovator and solutions provider, father of the CNET (now France Telecom R&D).
Competitors can worry now that two major predators team up in the convergence arena. They're meaning business, market share and furthermore, share of client.
Bouygues Telecom remains a Microsoft partner, but with a less exciting revenue sharing deal and a smaller pie to share. And don't count on i-mode for a long lasting differenciation. Convergence ? Sorry lads, rival SFR keeps an eye on your pal Neuf cegetel (as a strong minority shareholder and a friendly M-VNO host for Neuf Mobile) while building an ADSL offer on the ashes of Tele2 France.
"Mobile Centric" SFR also promotes its own SFR Messenger and a teletubby-sounding Happy Zone. Cute, but will this stop pervasive MSN and ubiquitous unik ?
In a cross continental move, Vivendi is building a telecommunity MVNO on SFR's network through another subsidiary, Maroc Telecom. MobiSud* will naturally serve France's strong Moroccan community as a start, but Telefonica should expect quite a few skirmishes accross the Mediterranean ring.

* dot fr or dot com ? Both have recently been locked, the latter by the adco JumpFrance.

easyMobile sees Northern Light - a Greek tragedy

I just loved the way easyMobile calculated their 10% share in UK's online mobile services : end of June, the 15k customers they signed up over the web were supposed to represent 10% of all customers signed up over the web since their launch early March (15% for PAYG customers - that's for Pay As You Go, not Play Against Yahoo! & Google).
Business is so easy when you wear pink glasses ! Frank Rasmussen could prove a perfect successor to Hans Snook or even Elton John. easy definitely does it...
Nordic M-VNOs, the early birds who caught more colds than worms, are being purchased by competitors ? And easyMobile's partner is Danemark's TDC, the mother company of Telmore, a Nordic M-VNO ? No sweat. Don't worry, be happy.
Will easyMobile.nl succeed ? Of course : Telfort x Telmore = more for Tele2, the strongest combo. Will easyMobile.de succeed ? Of course : it's on T-Mobile, the pinkest of all networks. Besides, easyMobile can leverage on a strong customer base in Germany : 3M subs to TDC's Talkline. A walk in the park, I telyou !
Actually, if you read closely, easyMobile.de happens to be a new JV between TDC and TIH Invest A/S (owned by Rasmussen himself, the founder of Telmore and CEO of easyMobile). This vehicle will be the new base to launch attacks "in up to 10 other European countries" in the name of easyMobile.
In other words, Stelios Haji-Ioannou is out of the picture : easyGroup provides the branding and lets telecom specialists handle the business. The Greek Serial Entrepreneur washes his hands : now you can fail, I won't wail.

The past was bright, the future is Orange Telecom

Once upon a time, France Telecom held a high potential brand and a valuable set of brains in Voila, the pride of the CNET. Then they snatched a bigger brand and another valuable set of brains in Orange, the bride of Hans Snook. As a result, Voila got fired, Orange castrated, and the "France Telecom" brand resurrected as a safety net for gallic customers - an umbrella as disgracious and noxious as a nuclear mushroom some brilliant Kommunikator decided to hide behind a swootch wannabe ; the not-at-all-orious esperluette (the & the self proclaimed net company couldn't even build a website on). As a result too, at the end of year 2004, Hans Snook held a comfortable #950 spot on the UK wealthiest list (£40M) and neither Orange nor even Vodafone were in Interbrand's Best Global Brands Top 100.
Now that rebranding is so passé, France Telecom is considering switching for "Orange Telecom". The metonymy won't be much challenged by the regulatory body which swallowed the FT-Orange fusion without a whisper and almost welcomes its daily anti-competitive abuses.
Will Orange win back its so bright future as easily as the group behind will win back market shares through household shares ? Can the brand that carried so much actually become what it was bound to be - something far beyond the brand of a carrier ?