Paris-Based Wireless Giant Sets Up
Research Operation in Cambridge, Mass.

Copyright 2002 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2002 The Boston Globe
Boston Globe...03/28/2002
From LexisNexis

By Peter J. Howe
from BroadbandWeek Direct - March 28, 2002

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Orange SA, one of Europe's biggest wireless phone carriers, has become the latest multinational communications company to set up a research operation here in hopes of tapping Kendall Square brainpower for innovative products and services.

Paris-based Orange, which now has 38 million subscribers -- most of them in Great Britain and France -- is pursuing plans to use cellphone service as a stepping stone toward offering a broad array of services, including banking, personal-identification systems, and video entertainment delivered over wireless connections.

Orange's Imagineering operation is putting the finishing touches on offices near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that now have 17 employees and are expected to grow to about 70 within three years, according to Richard A. Miner, Orange's vice president overseeing the unit.

The Cambridge location, converted warehouse space on Second Street with bamboo trees growing up through atriums, will also house executives of the company's $ 230 million venture fund. The fund's investments include, locally, WaterCove Networks of Chelmsford, a wireless networking start-up.

Orange is the latest of several companies to set up sponsored laboratories or research operations in or near MIT. They include British Telecom's "disruptive technologies" lab at MIT and research programs at MIT's Media Lab sponsored by Motorola, Deutsche Telekom, Nortel Networks, Telecom Italia, and many other global telecom players.