Orange launches 8Mbps business broadband

Orange will provide end-user support to remove the burden from corporate IT staff

Orange Business Services has launched a business broadband service designed to ease the issues of teleworking management. 

The broadband service, which adds to Orange's converged data access package, will offer download speeds of up to 8Mbps and unlimited download usage.

Orange will also provide end-user support for the service to remove the burden from corporate IT staff.

The company also expects to cut down the amount of management it takes to deal with staff working from home.

"Large companies may receive 500 separate expense claim forms from employees for home broadband, and the reason this offering is different is that it can support teleworking needs for all staff on a single contract," said a spokeswoman for Orange Business Services.

She added that the cost could be combined with other services such as mobile and fixed line products so that companies had a single bill to deal with.

Jason Ellis, head of convergence at Orange Business Services, claimed that very few companies have an IT policy for home users' broadband.

"It is very much 'get your own and claim it back on expenses' and look after yourself because we don't really support it as a business application," he told vnunet.com.

"Businesses have been saying 'Can you manage a service for us?' and we have seen quite a lot of demand from our initial discussions with customers."

The Orange spokeswoman explained that the broadband service is part of the company's plans to be a full service telecoms operator by the end of 2006.

"This puts Orange in a different league from mobile operators such as Vodafone and O2, " she said.