Cingular, Orange team on corporate users

Cingular Wireless has landed its largest partner to date for its Cingular Worldview program, announcing today that Orange SA will join. That means Cingular and Orange corporate customers in the U.S., Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland now will be able to combine their Cingular and Orange wireless usage for the purposes of volume discounts, and also manage billing and expenditures for both through the WorldView Wireless Information Navigator online portal.

The alliance is particularly good news for Cingular’s largest corporate customers with global operations, in its Cingular Corporate Digital Advantage, according to a company spokesman. Those customers have pre-determined minimum usage requirements, and receive discounts on usage above those requirements, he explained.

“If you have operations overseas and use Orange wireless services, your company’s overall usage of Orange services count toward attaining that minimum spend commitment,” he said. “Not only will corporate customers be able to meet contractual obligations much more quickly, but higher discounts will kick in as they attain higher usage amounts. For large companies spending $4 million to $5 million a year, that can translate into a couple of hundred thousand dollars in savings.”

In addition, Cingular and Orange sales representatives will jointly develop calling plans for corporate customers, and make their presentations jointly, even though the customers will have to sign two separate contracts.

Cingular already has WorldView partners in Austria, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland, but Orange is its largest partner to date, the spokesman said.