:Ben Metcalfe Blog

Orange France customers now have OpenID

(Disclosure: I provide consultancy to Orange France Telecom)

Orange has announced the Digital ID World that its 40 million customers that use it’s services in France now have an OpenID! UPDATE: I’ve been informed they have the option to easily create an OpenID – its opt in, unfortunately.

As Marshal Kirkpatrick writes over on R/W Web, that’s the second largest roll out of OpenID after AOL – who, it’s fair to say, have done little with it and even promoted their own federated login system. As this has now transpired to be an opt-in service, I guess this isn’t the second largest roll out of OpenID after all.

David Recordon blogged the announcement straight from the conference. At the moment I it is only available to customers of Orange France, which is the ‘domestic market’ funnily enough for parent company France Telecom, but that may change as Orange has telco presence in most European countries and beyond

It means that as Orange rolls out new and exciting services like Bubbletop you won’t have to go through the chore of signing up and entering your personal details yet again (well, eventually anyway – the Bubbletop dev team are close to launch but it’s still not clear which features will be available immediately for launch).

I think it’s nice to see Orange has included logos on the promo-page for OpenID-enabled vendors who offer ‘rival’ services to Orange’s own products. Sites given a nod include Zooomr (vs Pikeo) and Pibb (vs Orange Messenger)

Orange needs to continue to be aware that it’s ultimate success will come from allowing it’s customers the freedom to mix and blend the services they use from both the Orange stable and third-parties (which of course OpenID is a first step towards).

OpenID is nothing new for the Web2.0 brat-pack, but this announcement is significant both for the mainstream adoption of OpenID and also for innovation within Orange. Roll on OAuth + more… (hopefully!)