Orange S.A.

Orange S.A., formerly France Télécom S.A., is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It currently employs about 170,000 people, 105,000 of them in France, and has 263 million customers worldwide. In 2012, the group had revenue of €43.5 billion. Its head office is in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, and the current CEO is Stéphane Richard. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.

Orange has been the company's main brand for mobile, landline, internet and IPTV services since 2006. The brand originated in 1994 when Hutchison Whampoa acquired a controlling stake in Microtel Communications during the early 1990s and rebranded it as Orange. It became a subsidiary of Mannesmann in 1999 and was acquired by France Télécom in 2000. The company was rebranded as Orange in July 2013.

History

Nationalised service (1970s–1980s)

In 1792, under the French Revolution, the first communication network was developed to enable the rapid transmission of information in a warring and unsafe country. That was the optical telegraphy network of Claude Chappe.