Orange turns to Trust with its new three-year growth strategy

• Trust the Future plan centres around three pillars: Customer intimacy, innovative growth and excellence at scale
• Operator is keen to meet the personalised needs of its growing customer base 
• Middle East and Africa operations and Orange Cyberdefense play key role in growth plans

“Trust” is the key word for Orange as the French operator unveiled its three-year strategy at its Capital Markets Day in Paris this week.

The “Trust the Future” plan covers the three years to 2028 and is centred around three main pillars: customer intimacy, innovative growth, and excellence at scale. Its unveiling followed the conclusion of Orange’s previous three-year plan, dubbed Lead the Future, the end of which was marked with the publication of Orange’s 2025 financial results.

But what does the operator mean when it says ‘customer intimacy’? 

Speaking to investors and the press at its headquarters in Paris, CEO Christel Heydemann explained that Orange would look to leverage its strong brand to grow its customer base while increasing loyalty and differentiation.

“In mature European markets and [in] high-potential Middle East and Africa [MEA], customer expectations are shifting to hyper-personalisation. Our ambition is to build a lasting one-to-one relationship with every customer, which is what we call customer intimacy.

“We will strengthen loyalty and reduce churn to protect and enhance value. To differentiate, we will pursue a convergent approach” – bundled broadband and mobile packages – “but also go beyond [that] with multi-service offerings that bring together trusted connectivity, entertainment and essential services for life at home.”

She added that the MEA region would continue to play a significant role in driving customer acquisition, with Orange aiming to grow its fixed and mobile business by more than 40 million customers by 2028, taking it to around 380 million customers worldwide.

She also highlighted the importance of reducing churn, explaining that a 1% reduction in churn could lead to as much as a €40m improvement in EBITDA in France alone. This is why Orange is targeting improving its net promoter score (NPS) to be market leader in France by 2028 – a shift that it believes would involve improving its 2025 score of 34 by 6 points to 40 in 2028. Across Europe, Orange is aiming to improve its churn rates by 3%.

To achieve this Heydemann said Orange will improve or launch multiservices, including content, device insurance and financing that help drive loyalty. It will launch new AI assistants in customer service to reduce wait times and improve first time resolution rates, although these will be used alongside human agents, she added.

Heydemann also unveiled plans to launch digital “marketplaces”, building on Orange’s existing product in Spain (through MásOrange, a joint venture that is soon to be fully-owned).

Orange’s second pillar in its new strategy is innovative growth, which means scaling consumer services beyond connectivity, growing its B2B business, and building on its existing infrastructure.

The operator aims to add more than €500m in revenues from B2C initiatives, half of which will come from MEA markets, through products including Maxit and Orange Money.

In Europe, Orange plans to drive growth through the exposure of network APIs and developing its AdTech platform in France and Spain.

It also outlined growth plans in B2B through which it plans to add €500m in revenues by 2028. Its focus here is on Orange Cyberdefense (its cybersecurity services unit), sovereign AI and cloud services, and growth across specific verticals, including defence and health.

The final pillar, labelled excellence at scale, centres around Orange’s plans to build next generation networks, improve resiliency and efficiency, and play a leading role in the development of AI.

This includes plans to decommission 2G and 3G in Europe and France, decommission copper networks in France, Poland and Romania, and continue its cloud-native telco transformation processes during the next five years, as well as develop functions such as digital twins for network automation and field engineering operations.

As a proportion of sales, Orange expects capex to fall slightly, from 15.4% during the last three-year period to 15% by 2028. Including the integration of MásOrange, this would fall to 14%.

Mergers and acquisitions

The integration of MásOrange will “bring a significant step-up to cash generation”, explained Chief Financial Officer Laurent Martinez: Orange expects to benefit from €500m of synergies (with €350 million already achieved) once integration is complete.

Orange is also actively pursuing M&A in France, where it has jointly bid for the assets of Altice France, alongside Iliad and Bouygues Telecom. Martinez declined to give an update on the potential bid – the initial €17bn offer in October was rejected, with talks having resumed in January – but acknowledged the complication of a deal that involves “three billionaires” and a major corporation.

“It is a very complex deal – and I’ve done a lot of major deals in my career,” Martinez told journalists after the keynote. “This is among the most complex. But if I take a step back and look at what is best for the four players, I don’t see a better scenario than this one. Where there is a will, there is a way.”

CCS Insight analyst Kester Mann, who also attended the Capital Markets Day, said there were few surprises in Orange’s announcements, but added the operator “presented a creditable and wide-reaching update centred on targeted growth opportunities as it aims to build on the foundation laid by its previous plan, Lead the Future.”

He noted: “AI and cybersecurity predictably stand out as leading themes. Both support an overall focus on trust, reflecting accelerating industry efforts to offer reliable and resilient connectivity amid continued geopolitical uncertainty and rising digital complexity.”

- James Pearce, Editor, TelecomTV