traded as euronext ora nyse oran bit ora industry telecommunications founded 1988 ; 28 years ago 1988 privatization headquarters 15th arrondissement paris france area served worldwide key people st phane richard chairman and ceo products landline telephony mobile telephony fixed internet mobile internet ip television it services livebox revenue 40.236 billion 2015 1 operating income 12.426 billion 2015 1 profit 2.652 billion 2015 1 total assets 89.980 billion 2012 total equity 24.306 billion 2012 owner public float 86.6 % government of france 13.4 % 2 number of employees 157 000 2015 3 subsidiaries orange marine website www.orange.com orange s.a. formerly france t l com s.a. is a french multinational telecommunications corporation . it employs about 170 000 people 105 000 of them in france and has 263 million customers worldwide . 3 in 2012 the group had revenue of 43.5 billion . 4 its head office is in the 15th arrondissement of paris and the current ceo is st phane richard . the company is a component of the euro stoxx 50 stock market index . 5 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 t l com in 2000 . the company was rebranded as orange in july 2013 . 6 contents 1 history 1.1 nationalised service 1970s 1980s 1.2 creation of france t l com 1988 1997 1.3 roaring nineties 1997 2000 1.4 acquisition of orange and privatization 1.5 next scheme and rebranding to orange 2006 present 2 shareholders 3 operations 3.1 mobile 3.2 landline and internet 3.3 broadcasting 3.3.1 orange cinema series 3.3.2 orange sport 3.3.3 video on demand 3.3.4 online entertainment 3.4 music 4 subsidiaries joint ventures and holdings 4.1 orange business services 4.2 bt group 4.3 globecast 4.4 viaccess orca 4.5 orange labs 4.6 dailymotion 4.7 deezer 4.8 studio 37 4.9 cityvox 4.10 cloudwatt 5 controversy 5.1 staff suicides 5.2 access to some sites limited 5.3 accusations of false advertising in france 5.4 corruption in tunisia 5.5 anticompetitive practices in french overseas departments 5.6 sms and mms propagation of 1 january 2011 in france 5.7 controversies in uk regarding the quality of service 5.8 accusations of antisemitism and calls for boycott 6 governance 6.1 overview of governance 6.2 chairmen 6.3 chief executive officers 6.4 board of directors 6.4.1 composition of the board of directors 6.5 executive committee 6.6 head office 7 orange foundation 8 sponsorship 9 see also 10 references 11 external links history edit nationalised service 1970s 1980s edit 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 . in 1878 after the invention of the electrical telegraph and then the invention of the telephone the french state created a ministry of posts and telegraphs . telephone services were added to the ministry when they were nationalised in 1889 . however it was not until 1923 that the second t for telephones appeared and the department of p & t became ptt . in 1941 a general direction of telecommunications was created within this ministry . then in 1944 the national centre of telecommunications studies cnet was created to develop the telecommunications industry in france . in the 1970s france tried extra hard to make up its delay on other countries with the programme delta lp increasing the main lines . it was at the time when the majority of the local loop was built ; that is all the cables linking the users to the operator . moreover with the help of french manufacturers digital switching the minitel and the gsm standard were invented by engineers and cnet researchers . creation of france t l com 1988 1997 edit until 1988 france t l com was known as the direction g n rale des t l communications a division of the ministry of posts and telecommunications . it became autonomous in 1990 . this was in response to a european directive aimed at making competition mandatory in public services from 1 january 1998 . the 2 july 1990 bill changed france t l com into an operator of public law with marcel roulet the first chairman . since then the company has had a separate body corporate from the state and acquired financial autonomy . it was privatised by lionel jospin s plural left government starting on 1 january 1998 . the french government both directly and through its holding company erap continues to hold a stake of almost 27 % in the company . in addition the government conseil of ministers names the ceo . 7 in 1982 telecom introduced minitel online ordering for its customers . in september 1995 michel bon was appointed to run france t l com group . roaring nineties 1997 2000 edit in 1997 the capital of the new public company was successfully floated whereas the dot com bubble phenomenon made the stock exchanges bullish . a second share offering occurred in 1998 . france t l com got behind in the internationalization launched by its international competitors such as vodafone thus it started looking for targets at the highest speculation rate of the dot com bubble . moreover its alliance with deutsche telekom based on a reciprocal capital contribution of 2 % broke off when deutsche telekom announced that they were planning to do business with telecom italia without letting the french know even if this project ended up failing . acquisition of orange and privatization edit this section may require copy editing for spelling and punctuation as well as tenses seem often wrong . . january 2016 see also orange uk history in july 1991 hutchison telecom a uk subsidiary of the hong kong based conglomerate hutchison whampoa acquired a controlling stake in microtel communications ltd who by then had won a license to develop a mobile network in the united kingdom . 8 9 10 hutchison renamed microtel to orange personal communications services ltd and on 28 april 1994 the orange brand was launched in the uk mobile phone market . a holding company structure was adopted in 1995 with the establishment of orange plc. in april 1996 orange went public and floated on the london stock exchange and nasdaq 11 majority owned by hutchison 48.22 % 12 13 followed by bae 21.1 % . 11 in june 1996 it became the youngest company to enter the ftse 100 valued at 2.4 billion . by july 1997 the growth strategy paid off and orange reached one million customers with the lowest churn rate and best profit margins among its competitors . citation needed in october 1999 the german conglomerate mannesmann ag acquired orange for a price equivalent to 7 900 per customer i.e. us 33 billion . 14 15 16 the mannesmann s acquisition of orange triggered vodafone to make a hostile takeover bid for the german company . shortly thereafter in february 2000 vodafone acquired mannesmann for us 183 billion and decided to divest orange as the eu regulations wouldn t allow it to hold two mobile licences . 17 in august 2000 france t l com bought orange plc from vodafone for a total estimated cost of 39.7 billion . 18 19 20 at the time france t l com also bought stakes in several other international firms globalone equant internet telecom freeserve eresmas ntl mobilcom some of which have since been sold back . through this process it became the fourth biggest global operator.the mobile telephone operations of orange plc are merged with the majority of the mobile operations of france t l com forming the new group orange sa . on 13 february 2001 orange sa is listed in an initial public offering on the euronext paris stock exchange at a price per share of 95 euros with a secondary listing in london . 21 in may 2001 orange sa is listed in the cac 40 22 the benchmark stock market index of the top 40 french companies in terms of market capitalisation . 23 in june 2001 the france telecom mobile brands itin ris ola mobicarte were replaced by the orange brand . on 21 november 2003 france telecom withdrew the 13.7 % of orange s shares traded on the paris stock exchange . 24 on 2 october 2002 the ceo thierry breton was called to turn the company around after the company became crippled by debt resulting in share price collapsing to 6.94 on 30 september 2002 where it had been 219 on 2 march 2000 . france t l com was the second most indebted company worldwide in terms of short term liabilities . he obtained 15 billion of debt adjustment that needed to be borne by banks and investors another 15 billion of capital increase claimed to the state since it was still the majority shareholder and an additional 15 billion of cash to be found from internal savings . on 25 february 2005 he was appointed minister of finance and industry and replaced as ceo by didier lombard who had been head of the firm s new technologies division . 25 next scheme and rebranding to orange 2006 present edit logo of france t l com from 2006 until 2013 . the next scheme was the recovery plan for france t l com which aimed at among other things reducing costs especially wage costs carrying on a converging policy for its products and services and grouping together all the brands under a single brand except for the activities dealing with fixed line telephone which would stay under the designation france t l com . consequently this led to the disappearance of a number of brands . from 1 june 2006 france t l com tried to commercialize all its products under a single world wide brand becoming the sole brand of the france telecom group for internet television and mobile services in the majority of countries in which orange operated . orange business services became the brand for all its business services offerings worldwide replacing the equant brand . in june 2007 orange and mid europa partners acquire austrian mobile network company one re branding it as orange austria . in 2012 this network is sold to hutchison 3g and the orange austria brand is terminated . 26 in november 2008 orange launched five orange cinema series channels . to do so orange bought the exclusive rights from warner bros. . 27 for first runs of all new films previously held by tps star a subsidiary of the canal group as well as all films in its catalogue and rights to the film catalogues of gaumont hbo 28 and mgm . 29 orange also secured exclusive rights to broadcast saturday evening ligue 1 football matches from the french football federation . 30 sfr a subsidiary of canal . free accuses orange of tied selling because the orange channels are only available to its subscribers . 31 in june 2008 the firm abandoned a 27 billion bid for swedish operator teliasonera after the two companies failed to agree terms . 32 in 2008 orange was given permission from apple to sell the iphone in austria belgium the dominican republic egypt jordan poland portugal romania slovakia switzerland and orange s african markets . 33 on 8 september 2009 orange and t mobile parent deutsche telekom announced they were in advanced talks to merge their uk operations to create the largest mobile operator with 37 % of the market . both t mobile and orange brands will be kept due to the differences in targeted market . t mobile will remain the budget conscious offering and orange the premium one although there is some