The companies range from hardware startups that can help customers in developing countries use their phones in new ways, to data companies that are focused on things like identity verification and keeping cloud-based transactions secure. The telco selected companies that were creating a positive impact “on the way we use networks to improve our lives and businesses,” said the Chairman and CEO of Orange, Stephane Richard. The 6 startups were selected out of more than 100 applicants.

Working with startups isn’t really about funding companies — the startups have a potential to receive $20K from the program, but that’s more a token gesture than anything else. The real value of the partnership comes from the startups gaining access to Orange’s massive distribution channels, partner program and marketing heft. For example, startup Fenix International could work with Orange’s African operations to distribute its off-grid batteries.

Because Orange has such a large footprint in the developing world, the company has a particular focus on building apps and hardware for “the bottom of the pyramid.” Orange’s Executive Director of Business Services, Vivek Badrinath, told me in an interview at the launch event on Monday night that the mobile phone is often times the first branded product that a customer in a developing country has, and that brand then has the unique ability to transition into offering core services, like mobile banking, and credit.

During the accelerator program, called Orange Fab, the startups will have a chance to visit Paris, and at the end of the program will have a demo day to feature their progress. Here’s the first 6 out of Orange Fab:

1). Fenix International: We’ve covered this four-year-old San Francisco-based startup many times. The team has built a battery that can be used off grid to charge mobile phones and other electronics, and which can connect to various mini power generation systems like small solar panels, a bike charger, or the grid. The target customer is an entrepreneur in a village that sells cell phone charging, and SIM cards (hence why Orange is interested). These entrepreneurs are already selling these services but often times use shoddy and toxic car batteries for charging. Fenix already has distribution deals with carriers Vodafone and MTN.

2). Re-char: Re-char is a startup that makes a kiln that turns bio waste — woodchips, agricultural waste or leaves — into a bio-based charcoal. The startup has delivered about 1,200 “climate kilns” to farmers in Western Kenya. But with the Orange accelerator program, Re-char plans to build an Android-based device that can connect to a cell phone and can test the quality of the soil, including water content, and pH levels. Farmers would use these devices, and accompanying data service, to test and figure out which plots of land are arable and how much fertilizer to buy and where to use it. Beyond the services and product for farmers, the data from the testing and field mapping could create a valuable data base that could potentially be used by fertilizer companies, non-profits or government programs.

3). Phone Halo: This startup has built a location-based system that can use your phone to find lost belongings, like your keys or your wallet. The company uses quarter-sized button trackers that can be placed on devices — or potentially embedded in devices — to deliver an auditory ring when you need to find one of the lost items. The company has been working with consumer electronics companies to make third-party branded products.

4). AlephCloud: The team at AlephCloud is focused on creating secure connections between devices and across systems from Dropbox to box to email to Amazon. With the growth in the consumerization of IT (you know, like everyone in your office buying their own iPhone and using their own Dropbox account), distributed security systems will increasingly be needed.

5). Virtrue: Virtrue has developed an identification verification system that uses data and algorithms to verify identities across platforms. The service is intended to help companies and consumers reduce fraud and is prefaced on the idea that verified data is much more valuable than unverified data.

6). Talkdesk: Talkdesk is software that can enable a company to set up and operate a distributed call center. The software is browser-based and offers support for sales and marketing.

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Libon appeared for iOS in November last year, giving Orange a clear competitor to so-called over-the-top (OTT) applications such as Skype and WhatsApp. Like T-Mobile USA’s Bobsled and Telefonica’s Tu Me, the app provided free HD calls and messaging to other users of the same platform — regardless of their carrier — as well as voicemail transcription.

Now it’s available on Android as well as iOS. According to Giles Corbett of the Orange Vallée R&D department, the Android version is “completely integrated” into the native OS in a way that isn’t possible with iOS (see also, Facebook Home). “For instance, it integrates all of your incoming and outgoing GSM calls and SMSs in all of the conversations,” he noted, adding that setup, including the redirection of voicemail, could all be controlled from within the app.

On the iOS side, meanwhile, the new version — to be set live on Tuesday — will remain a step ahead of its Android counterpart, with the integration of audio chat (as in, conducting an asynchronous conversation using audio messages) and photo messaging. That said, Corbett said this functionality would be added to the Android version in the coming weeks.

I asked Corbett how Orange’s OTT efforts were keeping pace with developments such as Telefonica’s Tu Go, which gives O2 U.K. contract customers a Wi-Fi-capable app through which they can make and receive calls and texts using their existing number, with charges being integrated with their standard bill.

Corbett responded by pointing out that Libon creates a similar experience for customers of certain Orange operators. For example, customers of Orange’s low-cost Sosh brand in France can use Libon to call landlines and mobile numbers on “advantageous terms”, with call recipients seeing the caller’s standard number and — for calls to certain countries, at least — with charges coming out of their standard allowance.

Meanwhile, Orange Poland is to adopt a similar strategy, and by the end of June Libon will be integrated with core Orange services in 5 countries. For those who just want to use it as an OTT app alongside core services from other carriers, availability stretches to 95 countries. “It’s a way for Orange to reach and explore new customer bases,” Corbett said.

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Yet Europe still hopes to have 50 percent of the population at 100 Mbps speeds by 2020 with the rest of the population at 30 Mbps.

France’s president Francois Hollande outline the plan in a speech earlier this week, according to a Reuters story. From the story:

Three tranches of more than 6 billion euros each will fund the planned network rollout, Hollande said. One will come from network operators, one from a mix of operators and local government and the last from state and local-government money.

The goal is for 50 percent of the country to have faster broadband — although those speeds weren’t specified — by 2017. France attempted this before, but it failed because operators didn’t want to invest in rural areas where the costs of deployments are higher. Under the new plan, operators will be able to pool their capital to fund those areas, which may or may not actually inspire them to invest. The details aren’t clear, but if operators could share rural networks and all provide service on them, it might be a model worth watching for future rural deployments.

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Why is this important? Because telecoms operators’ networks are always facing a capacity crunch, mainly thanks to the explosion in cloud and online video, and there’s always a need to pump more bits through the system. We’re now looking at the next generation of such connectivity, alive and kicking.

The link, which is based on Alcatel-Lucent’s 400 Gbps Photonic Service Engine, runs between Paris and Lyon, and the first tester is the French educational and research network Renater. The early use cases for this bump up from now-standard 100 Gbps wavelength technology will most likely be found in business and research, for services such as telepresence that will make good use of the boosted bandwidth.

“This link transports the bulk of France’s scientific data that passes through our network,” Renater MD Patrick Donath said in a statement. “This pilot phase also aims to test the latest switching equipment supplied by major OEMs on a network running at this capacity and will enable us the anticipate the architecture of Renater’s network in the coming years.

“A 400 Gbps network is an important step forward for the networks and research projects of tomorrow.”

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That strategy met with only limited success, so last year Skype was able to confidently team up with the mobile billing company Mach on direct operator billing for Skype Credit. And now it’s here, starting in Russia: as of today, Skype users in that country can pay for credit through their normal mobile phone bill or pre-paid account balance.

According to a Mach spokeswoman, the same opportunity will be extended to Skype users in the U.S. and Canada later this month, and other countries will follow. Mach, which provides a billing gateway, has direct agreements with carriers in Canada and Russia. In the U.S. it is partnering up with Payvia, which has similar arrangements there.

“As well as our existing users benefiting from this new payment option, we expect direct operator billing to attract new customers who are looking for more convenient ways to manage their spend,” Skype payments chief Jason Macklin said in a statement.

No carriers are being quoted by name, but “leading mobile operators” are apparently playing ball. Mach lists Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Telus and Verizon Wireless as customers.

It should go without saying that the operators will get a cut of the Skype Credit purchases, although how much they get seems to be a tightly-guarded secret. The credit will cost the same as if it was purchased through more traditional means.

For Skype, it potentially means more reach. For the carriers, it means they get some kind of revenue stream beyond data usage (which is usually flat-rate these days) out of the ‘over-the-top’ technology that’s so disrupted their core business. It may just be that everyone’s a winner here.

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Which is why it’s very interesting to see eNovance ink a deal with Inktank, a startup that’s trying to commercialize the open-source Ceph storage subsystem. Ceph is integrated with OpenStack (and CloudStack, and the Linux kernel), and is pitched at providers that want to use cheaper commodity hardware rather than more expensive proprietary storage hardware.

The deal will mostly see Paris-based eNovance resell Inktank’s professional support and consulting services. There seems to be more to it, though: Inktank sales VP Nigel Thomas told me at Cloud Expo Europe today that the two companies “have a joint customer” already that’s “going to implement an OpenStack solution with Ceph”. He was loath to name Cloudwatt as that customer, but eNovance’s involvement in that project makes the conclusion hard to avoid.

So when will we see Cloudwatt in action, presumably with Ceph powering the storage component? According to the website, it will go live in October.

In other Inktank news, parent company DreamHost just released its own Ceph-based cloud storage service, DreamObjects.

DreamObjects hit general availability on Tuesday following beta testing by thousands of users. It’s compatible with other object storage services including Amazon S3 and OpenStack’s Swift and, for those paying month-to-month, DreamHost is charging 7c/GB for both storage and transfer-out bandwidth. The company says those making longer-term commitments will get cheaper prices, and there are also introductory discounts for those signing up now.

“We believe that the current generation of innovators and content creators will thrive and prosper in an environment where feature-rich, reliable cloud storage can be utilized for pennies per gig,” DreamHost CEO Simon Anderson said in a statement.

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I fall into the second camp for a variety of reasons, all of which have been brought to the fore by the revelation that Google is paying France Telecom-Orange to deliver its data to users. It’s not clear how much Google is paying Orange, or what the precise terms of the deal entail (I’ve asked both parties for clarity), but it does look like a line has been crossed. Here’s why that’s bad.

Google is rewarding greed

Telcos are very fond of complaining about the cost of building out modern mobile networks that can support the explosion in data traffic — despite the fact that mobile broadband usage is the carriers’ current cash cow. A group of European operators even tried (and failed) to get net neutrality banned globally, so that they could try getting content providers to pay for having their traffic reach the consumer in a usable state.

But this is not necessary. The carriers already make money off delivering data, and they make it from the consumer who signs up for a data tariff or pays by the megabyte. The content providers, meanwhile, already pay on their end to deliver that data – through their own internet service provider and/or through a content delivery network such as Akamai, and also through investing in private delivery networks.

If the receiving ISP wants more money on top of that, you’d think that they would provide extra value in turn. That’s not what’s happening here. So Google generates half the traffic on Orange’s network? That helps drive and develop Orange’s business, so it’s not something that should be penalized.

Google is abandoning its principles

Let me briefly pass the mic to one Eric Schmidt, who said back in 2006:

“Today the internet is an information highway where anybody — no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional — has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay.”

Those were the days. Fast forward six-and-a-half years and Google finds itself in a somewhat different position. The main agent of that shift is Android, which makes the company both a content and platform provider in a hugely competitive market.

The biggest gains to be made there lie in emerging territories such as Africa, where people are currently abandoning feature-phones for low-cost smartphones. When he revealed the hitherto secret Google deal this week, Orange CEO Stephane Richard was clear that his carrier’s strong position in Africa gave it the leverage it needed to extract cash from the U.S. firm. In other words, Google stuck by its principles until self-interest dictated otherwise, and in the process…

Google is messing things up for other content providers

As Schmidt’s words from 2006 make clear, one of the key attractions of net neutrality is the fact that both large and small players get equal access to the information highway. As he went on to say in that screed: “creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight”.

This is really all about barriers to entry. If Google is paying a carrier such as Orange to handle its traffic better than it might otherwise be handled, then Orange has the incentive to demand the same from other content providers. Even if it does not, we hit the problem of telecoms network capacity being a zero-sum game – if it weren’t, Orange wouldn’t have any leverage here, short of blocking Google outright.

In other words, Google has not only set a terrible precedent for up-and-coming mobile innovators, but it has also made it more likely that the quality of new services will be degraded over Orange’s networks — all so that the quality of Google’s services can be maintained.

It’s probably not a deliberate tactic on Google’s part to disadvantage potential rivals, but it could sure work out that way. And for that alone, Google should hang its head in shame.

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The explanation of how this changes the country’s telecoms landscape is rather number-tastic, so bear with me. Orange was the third-largest operator and 3 the fourth, so 3 is now number three (T-Mobile is in second place). Meanwhile, Telekom Austria’s A1 operation finds its number one spot entrenched, as it has picked up certain frequencies from Orange, along with base stations and Orange’s cheapo brand, the awesomely-named yesss! (exclamation theirs, not mine).

Hutchison Whampoa-owned 3 paid out €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) to Orange’s former owners, France Telecom and Mid Europa Partners. The Telekom Austria deal was worth €390 million ($511 million).

All this action has been brewing for almost a year, with the delay due to competition authorities’ concerns. The particular sticking point was the yesss! acquisition, as that mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) was the only real competitor to A1′s own low-cost brand, ‘bob’. However, the Austrian cartel court cleared the deal in December, and the country’s competition authorities decided not to appeal.

“We are delighted that, after undergoing a lengthy regulatory process, we have finally been able to close this acquisition,” 3 CEO Jan Trionow said in a statement. “We can now get down to focusing all our efforts on playing a leading role in developing the future of the Austrian mobile market.”

What will that future look like? Well, it may not be that consolidated after all.

The European Commission gave its approval to the 3/Orange takeover in October, on the condition that the combined operation give wholesale access to up to 16 MVNOs, so as to preserve competition in the Austrian market. It also got 3 to agree to give up spectrum to a new entrant – a full mobile network operator (MNO) – which will get to combine that with even more spectrum that will be auctioned off later this year.

In other words: there were four, now there are three, and soon there will be four again. However, things aren’t that simple – they never are in this game.

Earlier this week, T-Mobile Austria lodged an appeal over the spectrum aspect of the takeovers. T-Mobile’s problem is essentially that 3 and Telekom Austria now have enough coherent spectrum in the 1800MHz band to deploy long-range LTE services ahead of, well, T-Mobile.

T-Mo does already do 4G, as it picked up spectrum in 2.6GHz band when that got auctioned off previously, but that’s relatively short-range when compared with 1800MHz (which T-Mobile has, but not in a great enough quantity – essentially, T-Mobile’s spectrum assets are too spread out).

When you’re in a mountainous country, range is everything if you want to roll out mobile broadband without breaking the bank, and the lower the frequency the better. More sub-1GHz spectrum will be auctioned off later this year, which will give everyone a chance to do 4G over very long distances, but it’s the time between now and then that T-Mobile is complaining about.

“We would be a year behind or more on LTE deployment and that’s why we’re appealing the transfer,” T-Mobile’s spokesman told me.

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As part of its investigation, the regulator is also probing three other unnamed companies. The perception is that ISPs in France are either under-investing in infrastructure or violating the spirit of network neutrality, the idea that ISPs should not discriminate on traffic traveling over their pipes. Yet, in France, it seems that at least some in the government are willing to make Google pay for the ability to guarantee that ISP customers can receive its bits, turning the internet into Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians, with ISPs and governments tying it down. The question is, will what happens in France happen elsewhere?

The ARCEP investigation and user complaints

Early this year, communications regulator ARCEP will rule on an investigation it opened on November 22 following complaints that video streaming services including YouTube are often too slow to watch. Now three French senators are also calling on the country’s digital economy minister to take action.

ARCEP stepped up when a survey of over 16,000 ISP customers by French consumer group UFC Que Choisir found 83 percent of Free customers, 47 percent of Orange customers and 46 percent of SFR customers were unable to use YouTube properly.

Since the investigation began, many users have reportedly noted an improvement in connection quality, but connections remain patchy.

And this issue is not limited to Google. “The quality of connection is inadequate in almost all operators,” said UFC Que Choisir’s survey, which found that France’s native Dailymotion, ironically, is slowest to access through France Telecom’s own Orange ISP, which owns almost half of the YouTube rival. And 25 percent of consumers reported slow-downs while watching broadcaster TF1′s MyTF1 catchup service.

Is it under-investment or a desire to make content companies pay?

UFC Que Choisir says these symptoms may be caused by under-investment in infrastructure as well as commercial tensions between ISPs, which deliver web services to the end user but which don’t pay for the infrastructure. It has called on the government to define quality-of-access rules, in part by allowing the competition regulator ARCEP to build a quality-of-service observatory. Similarly, in the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission is also trying to figure out how to measure the quality of a broadband connection beyond just looking at speeds.

Inter-company tensions do appear to be at play. A case before another public agency — France’s competition regulator, the Autorité De La Concurrence — in September illustrates how ISPs eager for revenue from web content companies can hold the user experience hostage.

Cogent, which handles YouTube’s peering interconnections, had complained to the competition authority that Orange had refused its connections, wanting more money to add ports to connect Cogent traffic to its networks. Much of the interconnections between large ISPs, CDNs and web content companies are negotiated by private deals, so it’s rare to see the government get involved, or even to hear much about them publicly. In the U.S., when Level 3 and Comcast became embroiled in a public peering fight after Level 3 started sending Netflix traffic over its connections with Comcast, the FCC refused to get involved, and both parties settled the disagreement.

But in this case, the competition regulator said one ISP was within its rights to charge more money from services hoping to reach its subscribers. This so-called double-sided business model has been sought by ISPs who argue that companies such as Google are freeloaders making huge profits off the pipes of owned by the ISPs. In contract, Google and other content companies argue that their services are the reason customers upgrade to higher speeds and continue paying ISPs money.

And in France the ISP argument has gained at least one supporter in the Autorité De La Concurrence. The authority says France Telecom is offering interconnection prices significantly below market value, and it has accepted the telco’s undertakings to ensure transparency.

French policymakers generally are generally in the mood to extract more money from Google. They have already set such wheels in motion around taxation and copyright fees. Now infrastructure could be the next arena. But its unclear how far France will go.

It’s one thing to try to ensure that consumers have an acceptable connection to support online video, through implementing some kind of standards. It’s another to get between participants in peering disputes, and to possibly start setting rates.

The U.S. fight is bigger than France’s

But such fights are becoming more common as the stakes over the internet and web video get higher. ISPs are worried about the cost of delivering video traffic over their networks, while also losing out on the ability to charge users for pay TV packages that significantly boost their revenue. Meanwhile, consumers are demanding more video online because they can choose what to watch, when they want to watch it, on any device.

The French competition authority’s earlier investigation referred only to two individual companies at loggerheads in a specific peering fight. But the new inquiry by the communications regulator is much wider, looking at industry-wide practices around infrastructure and interconnection. And it comes following consumer outcry — identified in UFC Que Choisir’s survey — to which politicians may be keen to respond.

The outcome will be important because Google is already facing having to pay to re-use news content in some parts of Europe through both commercial agreements and possible new legislation that suggest excerpting is chargeable. That could set new precedents for the online content economy.

The French broadband outcome will be important because it will set up a precedent for other telecom regulators who are struggling with similar issues. Creating standards to ensure that customers have a quality online video experience is no simple task and may well require investment by ISPs, especially those on older technologies or oversubscribed networks.

As for the peering issues, if the government decides to step into the fray there, it could be setting the internet up for regulations that put governments in the role of determining who can connect to whom and how much they can charge. The OECD recently made a convincing argument that such regulations and government involvement would hurt the web and the economic development of companies dependent on the web. So what France does here might have influence far beyond its borders.

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Joyn (let’s just call it that, given it’s the brand name) lets customers IM each other and ‘enrich’ voice calls by tossing each other videos and files mid-conversation. It’s operator-agnostic, in the sense that you only need to be on an operator that offers it, regardless of the country, and Spain’s the first country in the world where the biggest operators all offer it.

Vodafone Germany also has it, as will Deutsche Telekom from December. In the U.S., MetroPCS has also introduced Joyn.

The GSMA says VoIP and IP video-calling is on the horizon too, as a function of Joyn. Here’s some marketing from GSMA chief marketing officer Michael O’Hara:

“This initial implementation of a new technology clearly required a major effort and strong leadership in the alignment of the ecosystem of manufacturers, developers and integrators, and operators. Consumers across the world will benefit from the leading efforts of these three operators in Spain.”

Still struggling to envision what sort of thing we’re talking about? Here’s a perky video that demonstrates the file-sharing capabilities of Joyn:

All this is based on the same embedded-deep-in-the-network IMS architecture as Voice over LTE. You need a special Android app to use it at the moment, although there should soon be ‘Joyn-embedded’ devices coming onto the market in early 2013. As it’s IP-based, of course, you can use Joyn services through the cellular network or through Wi-Fi.

Those Joyn-embedded handsets have to undergo rigorous interoperability testing and, once they’ve passed, you will know them by the bright yellow Joyn logo that shows up when you power the handset on. The same logo will be displayed next to contacts’ names in your phonebook

Why?

In case you can’t already tell, all this represents a severely major effort on the part of the carrier industry to get its act together. Why? Because the operators want to stay relevant.

The question is, are they already too late?

The last year or two has seen all sorts of seemingly self-defeating apps come out of major carriers – T-Mobile USA’s Bobsled, Telefonica’s Tu Me and, most recently, Orange’s Libon. These apps all offer free voice and messaging, and they offer it to any customer of any network.

In every one of these cases, the aim has been to stop customers thinking of services like WhatsApp and start remembering their operator again. The carriers have belatedly woken up to the fact that their customers increasingly think of them as flat-rate data providers, and that scares the living daylights out of them. There’s no differentiation anymore.

Now, the industry may just be pulling itself together. That fact alone betrays their desperation – it’s not like some players haven’t tried this sort of thing before (for a stunningly downbeat assessment of IMS’s chances a couple of years back, check out this 2010 post from Disruptive Analysis’s Dean Bubley).

The fundamental problem is that users already have these services. People are already invested in WhatsApp and Skype. The operators are now counting on Joyn becoming so ubiquitous that late adopters pick it up en masse, and it becomes a new standard in terms of usage as well as installation.

Do they themselves believe in it? Maybe. One might even look at Tu Me, Bobsled and Libon and see these ‘over-the-top’ services as a sign that the operators launching them don’t really have faith that Joyn will take off.

This is not to say that Joyn won’t be a success. These are huge companies we’re talking about, and if they manage to keep their my-enemy’s-enemy alliance together, they’ve got a lot of clout. But, in the worst-case scenario (for them), we’re looking at a last gasp.

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