One of the more common complaints about OpenID is that supposedly only small internet, Web 2.0 type, companies were adopting OpenID. Of course, people ignore that companies like AOL, Reebok, Sun, and Symantec are already part of the movement or will be in the near future (in Symantec’s case).
At the Digital ID World conference in San Francisco France Telecom has announced that subscribers to its subsidiary company Orange have OpenID’s now. So a telecom company is becoming an Identity Provider! This will certainly help make more people aware of OpenID as there are about 40 million potential new users of OpenID. Logging in to your Identity Provider with your mobile phone? Don’t know, interesting idea, though. 
According to David Recordon’s blog post Orange might also allow access to some of its services by external accounts. It’s not clear if that will be OpenID’s and/or other accounts. It would be awesome if Orange became also a Relying Party. But I guess, we’ll have to wait for a press release to find out more.
Tags: AOL, cellular telephone, David Recordon, Orange, Reebok, Relying Party, San Francisco France Telecom, Sun, Symantec