Orange UK (France Telecom) intends to slow its fixed-line broadband roll-out and rethink plans to introduce an Internet TV (IPTV) service in Britain. The confirmation came from Orange's CEO, Tom Alexander, whom highlighted the difficult economic climate and market competition.

The move suggests a more defensive attitude from Orange, which has recently been brimming with enthusiasm about its new and improved broadband services (here). However last week’s latest quarterly results (here) continued to show a decline in related subscribers.

Instead Orange has said that it will go back to focusing on improving its existing quality of service as opposed to growth. Much of this is likely to include greater emphasis on migrating existing customers to its newer unbundled (LLU) platform away from BT.

Not for the first time this has also resulted in an effective canning of the groups plans for an IPTV service, which has been stopped and restarted more times than we care to remember. Orange claims that while they were ready to roll a product out, the market itself was not.

However Orange has not completely shelved the idea of offering an IPTV service and will investigate alternative business models.