Orange France Launches GPRS/Wi-Fi Services

Orange France unveiled its the first commercial Wi-Fi offering. The company plans to have Wi-Fi services available in 400 key sites in 2003, and cover 50% of prime business hubs in France by 2005. The company is also offering business owners a “hotspot package” costing EUR 1,000 for the equipment, software and ADSL connection needed to set-up a hot-spot. Site owners would then be allowed to sell prepaid Orange Wi-Fi cards. Orange France is also planning to offer a GPRS/Wi-Fi all-in-one package to consumers. Both GPRS and Wi-Fi connections will be deducted from the post-paid package. Starting in March, all wireless modem cards sold by Orange will be dual mode GPRS/Wi-Fi. End-to-end security using the IPSec protocol and SIM card authentication are already included in the “PC Enterprise” package and will be part of the Wi-Fi service.
http://www.orange-programmepartenaires.com/wifi.htm