ORANGE predicted that it would lure as many as two million customers to its 3G (third generation) mobile network in the UK by the end of 2006, after finally switching on the long-delayed service yesterday.

Orange, a division of France Télécom, is offering seven handsets for the 3G service, which is being offered at £30 a month. Five of the handsets are available in the UK.

Vodafone, which has more than 145 million customers worldwide, is aiming for ten million 3G subscribers by March 2006.

Hutchison Whampoa’s 3G service, 3, has ten handsets available for its two million British customers. T-Mobile and mmO2 have yet to launch their 3G services in the UK.

Orange’s 3G service covers 70 per cent of the UK, compared with 3’s 80 per cent. But Orange still claimed that it had Britain’s “broadest integrated 3G network” because it owns its own second-generation network, whereas 3 and Vodafone’s 3G service cover60 per cent of the population.

Bernard Ghillebaert, Orange UK’s new chief executive, said the launch was “just the start of the 3G evolution” for Orange, which has spent almost £5 billion on licences for 3G services in the UK and France.

The technology allows customers to download video and music, as well as surf the internet, at high speed from their mobile phones.

Analysts said that Orange’s aim of achieving between 1.5 million and two million 3G customers by the end of 2006 was conservative, but Alexis Dormandy, Orange UK’s chief marketing officer, said the company was targeting only customers who it knew would use 3G.

“Some customers are only going to make voice calls, and there’s little point in giving them extremely complicated phones and the subsidies that go with them,” Mr Dormandy said.

Mr Dormandy added that only “a very low number” of 3’s customers used 3G services in addition to voice calls.

A 3 spokesman said: “That’s simply not true, the vast majority have used our 3G services.”

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