Orange Labs: 40 years of innovation in Rennes

France Telecom-Orange celebrate today “40 years of innovations in Rennes”, an event to mark the anniversary of its Orange Labs facility located in the Rennes metropolitan area.

acknowledged technological know-how

This event is the ideal opportunity to look back over some of the center’s major achievements. Orange Labs at Cesson-Sévigné has contributed and continues to contribute a huge amount to the Group’s structuring projects. Here are a few iconic examples from recent years:

• 2003 Orange is the first operator in France to launch ADSL TV / Orange becomes the first operator in Europe to launch TV on mobile phones / Orange launches the first TV decoder,
• 2004 Launch of 3G with Business Everywhere, intended for the general public and SMEs,
• 2005 a world first in High Definition Television: the Roland-Garros tennis tournament broadcast live over ADSL 2+ and in MPEG-4 HD format, in partnership with France Télévisions and the French Tennis Federation, launch of the first Livebox.
• 2006 launch of HDTV on fixed and mobile formats, and another world first, the ‘time shift’ pause-resume function for live TV,
• 2007 launch of Orange Sport Info over 3 screens (PC, TV, mobile),
• 2008 launch of catch-up TV on Orange TV with France Télévisions,
• 2009 world first and launch of the “start over” function on Orange Cinema Series,
• 2010 launch of the first Augmented Reality app in the App Store: Versailles Gardens,
• 2011 first results from the future of image encoding technologies: HEVC and 4K,
• 2012 launch of Orange Television (live) on Xbox in April thanks to new WebTV architecture – augmented guide to Telecoms City and the Mobile Multimedia Guide at the Louvre-Lens.

looking to the future

This event is also a great opportunity to look to the future and take a sneak peek at the future innovations currently in development at Orange Labs. Participants will see the following demonstrations:
Livebox Play (Livebox 3 + new decoder)
A personal Cloud on distributed storage infrastructure (my personal data is stored in the Cloud and can be quickly downloaded as and when it’s needed)

Smart Network Services (Optimized selection of the network linked to the type of service being used by the user so as to obtain optimum quality)
Improved video service quality (encoding techniques for the best possible video quality).

open research

Research activities are increasingly moving towards a network-based organization. The Orange Labs facility in Rennes has een working for many years with numerous industrial and academic players, specifically participating in the Global Competitiveness Images and Networks Cluster. Orange is also one of the founders of the B-com Technological Research Institute (Institut de Recherche Technologique - IRT), whose aim is to build the Internet of the future, based on ultra-high-speed broadband networks and the most advanced content technologies. France Telecom-Orange fully plays its part as a digital leader in this area, by acting as the chair of both these drivers of open innovation.

about Orange

France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with sales of 45.3 billion euros for 2011 and has 170,000 employees worldwide at 30 September 2012, including 105,000 employees in France. Present in 33 countries, the Group has a total customer base of 227 million customers at 30 September 2012, including 169 million mobile customers and 15 million broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.

With its industrial project, “conquests 2015”, Orange is simultaneously addressing its employees, customers and shareholders, as well as the society in which the company operates, through a concrete set of action plans. These commitments are expressed through a new vision of human resources for employees; through the deployment of a network infrastructure upon which the Group will build its future growth; through the Group’s ambition to offer a superior customer experience thanks in particular to improved quality of service; and through the acceleration of international development.

France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on NYSE Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more information (on the internet and on your mobile): www.orange.com, www.orange-business.com, www.orange-innovation.tv or to follow us on Twitter: @presseorange.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Brand Services Limited, Orange France or France Telecom.