Aug 28

Orange Lies

As far as I know, lies have no color. They don't have any smell either, as long as you're not going to hide a dead cat in the closet and claim it's nothing there, but we're not going to talk about dead cats today, obviously, since cats have nothing to do with Apple, as long as they aren't going to eat your iPod Shuffle or scratch the brand new 24-inch iMac you got last week! Well, today lies seem to have a color - it's Orange!

Why Orange? You probably know that Orange is a mobile carrier with a very large market share across Europe, selling the iPhone in countries like France, Poland, or Romania. So far, so good, but they are not the most honest company I heard of so far... One of the reasons for that Orange France just admitted capping 3G speeds

without announcing its customers first, and it's obvious this wouldn't have happened if they wouldn't have been pushed to the wall by angry iPhone users paying for a certain data bandwidth, and being provided less.

Leaving France behind, we go to Poland. What's up with Poland? Well, they just got the iPhone 3G last week, and Orange thought some fake queues could help increase sales. Unfortunately, there were only reports from people close to the carrier, but no official statement (not that you'd expect to see any official confirmation of such a fact!). No, no, let's change that - "no official statement so far!"

Responding to queries coming from Ad Age, a Polish Orange official said sales are strong, and everyone is happy, and that "As part of the excitement around the launch of the iPhone, some of our team have been joining customers outside our shops. Their aim is to welcome people to the Orange shop, share in their excitement and give information about Orange tariffs."

Sure, I got that! Wait...is that a pig flying by my window? It seems so... even more, it's an Orange one!