On Monday, April 27th, Romeo Machado (the country manager of Orange in Portugal) and I held a press conference with twenty Portuguese journalists at the SANA Evolution hotel in Lisbon. We discussed the new strategic plan of the Group « Essentials 2020 » as well as the Orange’s activities in Portugal.

Orange has set itself a strong, demanding and unique ambition for Essentials 2020: to
provide each of its customers, wherever they are, an incomparable service experience.

To serve this ambition, the Group will leverage five main drivers:

1. Offering richer connectivity.
2. Reinventing the customer relationship.
3. Building a people-oriented and digital employer model.
4. Accompanying the transformation of enterprise customers.
5. Diversifying by capitalizing on its assets.

All this will be achieved within the framework of a company that is efficient, responsible and digitally proficient.

The objective of Orange Horizons is to create new opportunities in the countries in which Orange is not present as a consumer operator, and that’s why we are attentive to the current changes in Portugal with the arrival of Altice and the sales of ONI and Cabovisão.

We consider the opportunity to open the stores in Portugal following a franchise model, precisely in Lisbon, Porto and Faro. In these three cities we already have three corners, thanks to the existing partnership with NOS.

We think that the pan-European or global products and services are the answer to the customers’ needs who travel throughout Europe a lot.

Additionally Orange Horizons manages the pages of orange.com in the countries in which Orange is not present as a consumer operator. The company exploits e-commerce stores in Europe, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and in the United States in where it’s possible to buy devices and connected objects and supplies new services such as Orange Top-Up that allows recharging 400 operators on-line in more than 100 countries in the world.

Development in 2015

In 2015, Orange will offer new products and services such as the prepaid card Orange Holiday that enables customers to communicate and to connect to the web across Europe, without additional cost of roaming. This card will also be available on the website soon and in the Travel Lounge of the travel agency NetViagens.com, our new partner in Portugal.

Orange is also taking advantage of the success of the application Orange Radio that allows listening to unlimited radios from all over the world. A website dedicated to this application will soon be launched.

Furthermore, for music lovers, Orange Ritmic, a website that allows listening free music, watching videos, creating playlists and sharing them, will be launched in June.

You will soon find others interesting new offers online as a sales service for companies will soon be available, with a B2B dedicated team as well as a drop-shipping service enabling direct delivery to the end customer.