Orange iPhone Deal Temporarily Barred

France’s competition authority has placed a temporary ban on the exclusive distribution deal between France Telecom (and its subsidiary Orange) and Apple for Apple’s popular iPhone. It said that the deal “by nature introduces a new factor of rigidity in a sector that already lacks competition.” With this new development, any operator can now sell the iPhone, which should be music to iPhone fans in France who are on other network operators. Now if only they’d do something like this here, though AT&T wouldn’t be happy if that were to be the case.