Orange will begin selling the iPhone in the UK on November 10, one day after O2’s exclusive agreement with Apple expires. Despite hopes that the two carriers will engage in a price war during the run-up to Christmas, Orange will play the “added value” card.

As Geek reported last month, Orange UK and Vodafone UK have both announced plans to carry the iPhone 3G and 3GS in the UK. Unlike Vodafone who won’t be offering Apple’s handset before early 2010, Orange will begin selling the iPhone 3G and 3GS on November 10, suggested the Guardian. The carrier has not commented on Guardian’s report and has yet to officially announce the date. Vodafone will announces its half-year results on October 10. O2’s exclusive two-year agreement with Apple comes to an end a day earlier.

Orange UK promised to release price points, tariffs, terms of purchase, and availability dates in due course. The carrier boasted that already 200,000 would-be iPhone buyers have logged their interest in an online form. This past Wednesday, Orange announced up to 20Mbps download speeds available to customers in its home broadband network areas, which covers 65 percent of all UK homes. Carphone Warehouse, the UK’s leading independent mobile phone retailer, is expected to sell the iPhone on behalf of Orange as well, following a similar deal Carphone has had with O2.

Orange UK is owned by France Telecom SA which carries the iPhone in 28 countries. In a bid to secure a much needed bargaining chip in its business dealings with Apple, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom plan to merge their respective T-Mobile UK and Orange UK units.

The join venture, rumored to be finalized in November, will have a combined 28.4 million subscribers and 37 percent stake of the UK mobile subscribers, based on both carriers’ official stats as of December 2008. The deal is pending approval from the UK’s competition authorities.

Read more at the Guardian

Christian’s Opinion

The UK is a prime example that the Californian firm pursues abandoning network exclusives in favor of multi-carrier deals. UK consumers who criticized O2’s network and services hope that multi-carrier deals mean more choices, a better service, and lower-priced tariffs. Despite the fact that O2 must fight Orange in the run-up to Christmas, I think that neither carrier will engage in a price war. In fact, it’s my opinion that both Orange and O2 might even form a duopoly regarding the iPhone, at least until Vodafone start selling the handset in early 2010.

Tom Alexander, Orange UK’s chief, told Guardian that the company will focus on adding value by bundling accessories and pre-loading apps on the device. T3 expects some “fruity tariffs” as a result of the Orange deal, while the Mobile Industry Review sees “a substantial amount of pent-up demand from an array normob segment” that has been “highly, highly frustrated by the exclusivity agreement.”