Five years ago this week… Orange made a strategic investment in fledgling connectivity marketplace BandwidthX, raising questions as to whether the latter’s services would move to Europe. BandwidthX came to life on the prospect of WiFi offload, acting as a trusted neutral marketplace for US tier 1 operators to privately exchange bandwidth in real-time. Faultline noted at the time that France was the original WiFi offload marketplace, as Iliad’s Free began with WiFi offload from its own home gateways when launching its successful cellular service, leading Orange, SFR and Bouygues to quickly follow suit. It looked as though, if coaxed to Europe, BandwidthX could provide Orange with extra resources to operate more actively in the region, while signalling to other…