- Orange is offering free ChatGPT Plus for a year with its 5G+ plan in Europe
- The Special Series 180 Go 5G+ plan also includes 180GB data, calls, and Netflix
- It costs €41 a month, but younger customers get reduced pricing
ChatGPT gives users free access to OpenAI for general conversations, answering questions, generating content, and the like, but if you need more, there’s the premium version, offering access to GPT-4 alongside benefits like priority access and faster performance during peak usage periods, which can be useful for those who use the service a lot.
ChatGPT Plus costs $20/€23 per month, but mobile users in Europe can now get it free for a year. As you’d expect, this isn’t something that everyone can benefit from.
The 12 months of free ChatGPT Plus – worth nearly €280 – comes as part of Orange France’s 5G+ consumer plan, and is the first such promotion in Europe.
New ChatGPT Plus users only
Orange’s Special Series 180 Go 5G+ plan costs €41 per month with no commitment.
As well as the free ChatGPT Plus it also includes 180GB of mobile data, unlimited calls, SMS, and MMS in mainland France, and dedicated bandwidth to help maintain service quality during periods of high usage. Six months of Netflix Standard with ads is also included.
Younger users aged 18 to 26 benefit from reduced pricing – Orange charges them just €25 per month – as well as stronger data protection features.
There is another catch for anyone interested in making use of the year’s worth of free ChatGPT Plus, and that’s you need to be a new ChatGPT Plus user. You’ll also need to activate the offer within three months of subscribing, so don’t forget. After the first year, standard ChatGPT Plus billing applies unless you cancel, which is standard practice for this kind of offer.
“With its 5G+ launch, Orange France’s key go-to-market message is the promise of ‘dedicated access’ in busy coverage areas,” noted Emma Mohr-McClune, Chief Analyst – Telecoms Practice, Technology at GlobalData.
“The wireless market has operated on a ‘best effort’ basis for decades, and real customer education is required here to help end-users understand the benefits. They need to understand precisely how and when these benefits will materialize to effectively capitalize on the monetization opportunities available. It’s not clear that Orange France has done enough in this respect.”
“One angle that Orange France is tacitly exploring is the pairing of 5G+’s superior uplink capability with AI experiences,” Mohr-McClune added. “Certainly, a faster and stronger wireless uplink is required for satisfactory experiences, and with a theoretical maximum of 200 Mbps upstream, Orange 5G+ promises just that.”
While Orange’s new Special Series 180 Go 5G+ plan will give the telecom provider the edge in Europe for now, it’s not expected to last. As Mohr-McClune noted, “Free Mobile flagged up the launch of its own standalone 5G network last September and Bouygues Telecom is already marketing offers for enterprises.”