Orange revives 'fixed'/mobile offering

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 27 September 2005 14:10

Your IT - Home IT

Orange, Hutchison Telecommunications CDMA network arm, has launched a service that combines fixed line and mobile functionality, all from a mobile phone.

The new service, Mobile+Home, is a close replica of Orange's main offering at its launch back in 2000. That product, LocalZone, was quietly dropped (although is still supported) in favour of more conventional mobile offerings.

Under the new service the customer gets a local phone number on which they can be contacted on their cellphone when at their designated location (home or office). Calls from that location are also charged at lower rates than normal cellphone calls: a local call is 10 cents for 20 minute and charged at Orange mobile rates thereafter, up to 500 minutes per month. Calls to other Orange phones (within Orange network coverage areas) are free for the first five minutes.

The service is only available in the Orange network area coverage area: Sydney and Melbourne, plus Newcastle, Wollongong, Gosford, Werribee and Geelong and there are no plans to extend it. Outside these areas, Orange phones roam onto the Telstra CDMA network.

There is no monthly charge for the local number and calls to it are charged at the same rate as calls to any other geographic number. The service requires a commitment of only a minimum monthly spend of $9 on mobile services such as voice calls or SMS.

Several mobiles can share the same local number. Calls to that number will cause any phone at the designated location to ring. There is a separate shared voicemail, box for the local number in addition to the private mailbox attached to each mobile number.

According to PhoneChoice, the service meets the all the criteria of the PhoneChoice landline substitution checklist (unlike most VoIP services) This includes the ability to make 000 emergency calls; to make and receive calls during a household blackout; to provide adequate voice quality.

Mobile+Home would make an ideal complement to the Unwired service which provides broadband access without the need for a fixed line.