Orange is the fifth largest telecoms operator in the world, as of 2009 the company had over 189 million customers world wide. The Orange brand was created back in 1994 by Hutchison Telecoms a UK mobile phone network and was later acquired by France Telecom in August 2000.

The Orange mobile network began life as a consortium comprising of Pactel Corporation, British Aerospace, Millicom and a French company called Martra back then Orange was called Microtel. In 1991 the company was granted a license to create a mobile phone network in the UK, July 1991 Hutchison Telecommunications (UK) Ltd acquired Microtel from BAe. The Orange brand was created by an internal team at Microtel headed by Chris Moss (Marketing Director) and supported by Martin Keogh, Rob Furness and Ian Pond. The brand consultancy Wolff Olins was charged with designing the brand values and logo and advertising agency WCRS created the Orange slogan "The Future's bright, the Future's Orange" along with the now famous advertising. . The logo is square because it was felt that the word orange could be seen as a fruit and it needed to be strong in the business world rather like American Express and Hertz. It was also important to establish it as the colour Orange, which is seen as a strong Feng Shui colour. The Orange network was launched on 28 April 1994.

At the beginning of 2006, Orange in Slovakia started providing triple-play services via FTTH under the name "Orange Homebox".

On 27 September 2007, T-Mobile Netherlands bought Orange Netherlands from France Telecom and split the two segments. Mobile telephony was integrated with T-Mobile, broadband is now provided by a subsidiary called Online. The European Commission had already approved the acquisition as it was not seen as a danger to competition.

In 2008 Orange was given permission from Apple to sell the iPhone in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Orange's African markets.

In September 2009, Orange was the first to declare that they would be selling the iPhone in the UK once O2's exclusivity had ended. Vodafone announced that they too would be selling the iPhone in the UK. This however would be in early 2010, whereas Orange would start selling the iPhone at the end of 2009.

On January 1, 2009, the Swiss multimedia shops company CityDisc is officially property of the France Telecom Group and becomes Orange CityDisc, the first hybrid shops in Europe to sell not only cellphones and accessories but also music, films and videogames.

On September 8, 2009, Orange and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom announced they were in advanced talks to merge their UK operations to create the largest mobile operator with 37% of the market. It is unclear the future of either brand when such deal is completed in November.

On October 28, 2009, Orange changed the name of its Luxemburgian telco VOXMobile to Orange.

On December 11, 2009, Egypt's regulator has approved an offer from a unit of France Telecom (Orange) to buy Mobinil.

In mid April 2010, Orange UK announced that it would outsourcing the management of its broadband network to BT. Orange will now sell a BT Wholesale product, as opposed to LLU or unbundled broadband as it does currently. This announcement was greeted positively by broadband commentators who feel that the move is likely to improve Orange's poor reputation for broadband quality and customer services.

On 1 July 2010 Everything Everywhere Limited took control of both Orange & T-Mobile in a joint venture, although currently both Orange & T-Mobile are keeping their individual shops and brands. It is likely that their overall network footprint will increase as both networks intend to allow each other's customers to "roam" on the other network to pick up signal in locations that previously had no service.