
How France’s Free will reinvent mobile - jaybol
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/09/how-frances-free-will-reinvent-mobile/
======
ravloony
I remember when I got to university (Nantes, France). On my very first day,
another guy said to me: "By the way if you are shopping around an internet
connection, go with Free, they rock!". No other user has ever said that to me
about a telecoms company. Not once.

And they did rock. It cost 29.99€ per month for 2MB/s at the time (2003),
which was 4 to 20 times the competition (my brother had a 128kb/s connection,
I seem to recall - it took ages to download songs from napster. It kept on
getting better, too. Within 6 months I had 8Mb/s, and a year after that 18,
then 24.

The modem was huge, but it told the time in letters of green, and had its own
IP adress. I lived in a tiny flat in the same building as my other brother, so
we trailed a network cable across the corridor - enough bandwidth for both of
us. We moved to a new flat, and they upgraded the modem, or Freebox (every
modem in France is now called *box)

That was one of the most successful market disruptions I have had the
opportunity to witness. I think M. Niel just did it again. He's turned the
leaders of a market into followers, desperately copying his every move. Watch
and you'll see. They already started, trying to undercut what they thought was
Free's offer with Sosh (Orange) and Red (SFR). Too little, too late. I think
the market will vote with it's wallet. Things should get interesting.

~~~
babebridou
Official press releases from competitor Orange says (paraphrasing): "Dear
customers, we will let Free celebrate their D-Day, but stay assured we will
make sure to come back to you later."

All online & phone services for ending or transferring mobile contracts are of
course overloaded and currently unavailable in France. FreeMobile's
registration webpage (<http://mobile.free.fr>) has been unavailable for the
past 5 hours. Figures fly on twitter, as apparently about 1.5 million people
tried to access it this morning.

Streaming figures for the live keynote amount to 80Gb/seconds over 300
servers, Online.net representative @Online_fr said on twitter. Apparently
600,000 people watched the keynote live, Online.net even claimed it's a world
record. (Online.net = Iliad/Free subsidiary dedicated to hosting services)

You are indeed witnessing Market Disruption - that or a highly successful
launch, maybe a bit too successful :)

------
GuiA
I'm French, and moved to the US a couple years ago. The high price and
awkwardness of internet and mobile phone offers here compared to France is one
of the biggest tech differences that struck me, as I always had imagined that
the US would be far ahead.

I still don't own a smartphone (I use Google Voice most of the time at
home/work, and a pay-as-you-go phone the rest of time), because the offers and
price just don't make sense to me.

It's clearly a market that's ripe for disruption, and there are a couple
interesting and promising startups in that space, although I'm not sure how
likely it is to change given the huge monopoly and control the carriers have
consistently had.

~~~
mekoka
Well, your question includes the answer itself. The US is not the anomaly,
France is and for a very specific reason: Free.

France would have been in the exact same situation as the US if Free had not
been a disrupter. Free isn't the natural byproduct of the sane telecom
environment that existed in France at the moment of its inception. It's rather
an initiative championed by very very smart people, with very decent ethics.

So the question isn't so much, why the US (and Canada) have such gouging
prices, but rather what could be done to recreate the Free experiment there.

~~~
babebridou
> It's rather an initiative championed by very very smart people, with very
> decent ethics.

Let's not go there! Niel, founder of Free, did it all "for the lulz". His
favourite passtime as an engineer founder is to take a market, build a 100%
better product, vastly undercut the competition and watch the competition
rage, killing businesses in the process. He did exactly this with all his
former businesses, starting with Porn services on the Minitel, and was even
sentenced to deferred jail time for misuse of company asset.

This is clearly not "decent ethics"!

~~~
msh
References please

~~~
babebridou
As requested:

Biography in English

<http://www.economist.com/node/14402214?story_id=14402214>

There's more available on French-speaking web - here are a couple links about
his porn debuts and his jail time for misuse of company asset.

[http://www.liberation.fr/societe/010160359-le-x-versant-
obsc...](http://www.liberation.fr/societe/010160359-le-x-versant-obscur-du-
patron-de-free) [http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/prison-avec-
sursi...](http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/prison-avec-sursis-pour-
xavier-niel_460958.html)

The part about him doing it "for the lulz" was never officially acknowledged.
With that said, French media have nicknamed him "le Trublion" which means
roughly "the troublemaker", and he clearly likes it.

An example of pure trolling from Niel: as a justification for why he invested
money in a newspaper in financial trouble, he said "You're asking me if I have
35 million euros? Don't take this the wrong way, but this amount is roughly
equal to the daily variation of my fortune on the stock market" - "Si je
dispose de 35 millions d’euros ? Je ne voudrais vexer personne, mais cette
somme correspond à la variation quotidienne de mon patrimoine en Bourse."

[http://www.capital.fr/enquetes/hommes-et-affaires/xavier-
nie...](http://www.capital.fr/enquetes/hommes-et-affaires/xavier-niel-futur-
maitre-du-monde-615051)

Now I agree that businessmen should be judged on their actions. He is smart,
he is good, and I like his way of dealing with things. But he was always and
will always be a Troll at heart, a well-intentioned one maybe, but "very
decent ethics" clearly does not accurately describe him.

\- sorry for the mix-up I messed up my reply earlier.

~~~
jtheory
I skimmed the first couple of articles, but other than his beginnings in porn
(not a business I'd want to go into, but to be sure there are more and less
ethical people there!), he doesn't strike me as someone who's either a troll
or very unethical.

Your definition of trolling isn't how most people think of it. Trolls tell
lies, make personal attacks, and make outrageous & false claims solely to
upset other people and waste their time.

Your quote from Niel (about investing in a newspaper) shows ego, but is he
lying? And even if he's exaggerating, who does that upset?

Personally, I don't like the porn history, but he gets many _extra_ points for
"causing trouble" in corporate France. I've wasted many hours of my life
dealing with France Telecom/Wanadoo/Orange, SFR, and Bouygues (been through
them all), and know monopolistic abuses when I see them (how about the whole
concept of customer support phone calls that are _more expensive_ than a
normal call?), and I really, really do not feel sorry for them being forced to
actually compete a little.

If you have better examples of "trolling", that'd help perhaps...

~~~
babebridou
The thing is, you need to remember that in France, you can't talk about
personal fortune/money without raising public outrage. We have an extremely
special relationship with money, it is absolutely _taboo_ to talk about how
much money you make or have, and not only in public, in private too, one has
to make amends when they reveal that they earn more than the minimal or (god
forbids!) average wage.

Likewise, comparative advertising is _illegal_ in France. You can't be the
French Coca-Cola and feature the French Pepsi in your ads.

Anyway, let's drop the troll word. I have more quotes to provide though, maybe
these will better carry the reputation of "Troublemaker".

Couple recent quotes from Niel (taken from LeWeb 2011)
[http://www.techrevolutions.fr/free-mobile-le-troll-de-
xavier...](http://www.techrevolutions.fr/free-mobile-le-troll-de-xavier-niel)

"The thing that surprises me is that our concurrents have done nothing yet.
They micro-reduced their prices by a few percents, this isn't reasonable! They
have to get at it for real, they have to lower the prices for real! Start to
cut right now, before we arrive! (...) Ready your communication, build some
aggressive marketing plans, then maybe you have a chance to keep on existing!
Right now it's a joke, you didn't lower your prices! This isn't serious!"

"I invite you to go and visit their work places, their desks, their lifestyle,
look at the leaders of these companies all with their car with driver. As for
me I have my cab waiting for me outside! When they no longer have all that,
management in these companies will begin to improve!"

2010, from [http://frenchweb.fr/xavier-niel-il-etait-une-fois-la-
revolut...](http://frenchweb.fr/xavier-niel-il-etait-une-fois-la-revolution/)
"We're so far ahead of the rest that they should be ashamed."

Around 7:12-7:45 in the linked video: "This struck me as a lack of courage, I
had hoped they would, at last, offer unlimited phone calls from their box.
[smiles ironically] But you see, we have to deal with copycats who don't go
all the way with their copying philosophy. And that's it... actors who are
bad, and who even when they copy become bad because they stop copying as soon
as there's something good, I personally find it very disappointing. I believe
that we're in a market that has always copied us, so companies need to be
brave and copy us all the way."

About Orange: "We have a relationship of tenderness with Orange." (I'm not
sure it translates the right way: he implies a relationship that's akin to a
kid and his grandmother)

Illustration of his audacity & engineering background, and, well, ethics: in
1996, he launches a minitel service that would become extremely profitable
(while not being related to porn): a Reverse Phone Number Lookup directory. At
that time France Telecom provided a phone directory to everyone, with the
first 3 minutes of connection being free. He simply wired a hundred minitels
and browsed the service 3minutes at a time until he had every single person in
France on his own database. There was a public outrage. There was a trial,
which ended in 1998. Iliad lost and had to pay 100,000,000 Francs in fines
(roughly 15 million euros, which was a lot those days) to France Telecom.

link to the legal report for that case:
[http://www.legalis.net/spip.php?page=breves-
article&id_a...](http://www.legalis.net/spip.php?page=breves-
article&id_article=130)

The rest of my knowledge about Xavier Niel's character comes second-hand and
is private, so I won't have much more to add here.

Don't take all this the wrong way though, I like this entrepreneur a lot. He
is one of my role models.

~~~
jtheory
I understand your points, I think -- you're talking far more about _taste_
than about _ethics_.

"Ethics" is about right and wrong -- what actions harm people on the whole,
and what actions help them, why and how.

It's not directly related to obeying the law, or following rules. Making
decisions that greatly help the general public at the expense of a massive
corporation, especially if those actions carry risk (like the risks that come
with breaking laws)... that's easily interpreted as highly ethical. I
certainly don't know enough about Niel to make any judgements about his ethics
either way, but your examples here don't show unethical behavior.

It's actually _more_ ethical if he lowers his own image (by breaking strong
taboos) to talk about things that need to be talked about (I'm thinking of his
comments about executive lifestyles...).

As a counter-example -- think about the ethics of being a corporate industry
leader, and always acting perfectly refined, but still actively screwing your
customers as much as you can -- charging far more than your costs, tricking
them with hidden & confusing charges, making it extremely difficult for them
to get customer support or even to end their contract... is that ethical?

------
chmike
According to the live annoucements this morning:

Unlimited phone calls into 40 countries, unilimited SMS and MMS, unrestricted
internet access up to 3GB : 19.99€/months or 15.99€/months for ADSL Free
subscribers.

60min and 60sms : 2€ or 0€ for ADSL Free subscribers.

Phones are not include but can be bought with independent 12, 24, 36 months
credit plan. ie. iPhone 4Gs is provided with 1€ entry and 19.99€/months over
36 months.

~~~
baby
> unrestricted internet access up to 3GB

: they lower the speed after.

> Phones are not include but can be bought with independent 12, 24, 36 months
> credit plan

and 0% interest.

~~~
Fabimaru
Not exactly. For an iphone 4S 16Go, Apple price is 629€ and Free price is 720€
(over 24 or 36 months), so it makes something like a 9% or 13% credit.

------
baby
Trying to watch the conference[1]. Some people compared that guy to Steve
Jobs, I personally think he's not a good orator but is trying to be. His first
lines were "we are dumbasses, but now you guys are the dumbasses not me
because I already joined free mobile". Pretty aggressive.

He's a fantastic engineer though. Trying to stream more and will edit after.

edit: having a really hard time to stream. Words that come back a lot in the
first 10 minutes: "ras le bol" ("discontent" in a familiar way). He's
insulting a lot the 3 other operators, give numbers and the source! (I like).
It's actually very catchy to watch eventhough I think it's pretty brutal for
an official show supposed to launch the 4th big operator in France.

edit2: apparently SFR one of their big competition is doing really bad in
stocks these few minutes[2] and the first trend is indeed #freemobile[3] on
twitter.

edit3: found a better link for the show[4]. Just finished it. Brilliant. The
show was simple, as simple as the offer (only 2 plans). Brutal, easy to watch,
beautiful. As he said at the end of the video, there will be a before and an
after january 10th in France (something you cannot really grasp if you're not
from there).

[1] <http://live.free.fr/>

[2] [http://bourse.sfr.fr/actions/cours/vivendi-
FR0000127771,FR.h...](http://bourse.sfr.fr/actions/cours/vivendi-
FR0000127771,FR.html)

[3] <https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23FreeMobile>

[4] [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsvx2_free-lancement-
de-l-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsvx2_free-lancement-de-l-offre-
mobile_tech?start=0#from=embediframe)

------
agumonkey
I thought they couldn't pull a small sized contract, but they did it. 2 euros
for 60min/60sms is almost a social advance.. ~5 times less than the average
60min contract, and 7 times personnally.

~~~
lloeki
Actually there exists a mandatory (by law) social service in France, which has
been mocked by Free as a fraud (40min and 40sms for 10€, available only under
certain income criterias)

------
pefavre
They did it! Unlimited calls, national and international; 3Go fair use of
data; for 15,99€/mth (20,4$/mth). That's what I call disruption!

~~~
jan_g
I'd be very careful to jump on the 'unlimited calls' bandwagon. Voip is
especially sensitive to fraud, it happens all the time to practically every
voip provider that I know of. That's also why 'unlimited' in marketing is
often counterbalanced with fair-use and/or minutes cap in small print.

~~~
masklinn
> Voip is especially sensitive to fraud, it happens all the time to
> practically every voip provider that I know of.

Could you clarify what you mean by "fraud"?

Free has been leading VOIP and unlimited calls from set-top boxes so I'm
guessing they understand the dynamics of it.

~~~
jan_g
On one hand I mean classic stuff from provider's perspective, like malevolent
user setting up a premium number in some remote country (Afganistan, Nigeria,
etc.) with insane rates (5$/minute and more), which he is calling for long
periods. This is often completely automated with multiple simultaneous calls
on multiple premium numbers and callee is actually an IVR. And you can't touch
the user, because you've promised him unlimited calls. Such schemes can be
even more elaborate with many 'proxy' providers in between, so you don't even
know, what is the real cost of the call until after the fact (you receive a
giant bill from some remote provider). I've seen examples of voip providers
losing thousands of dollars a day and in one case even going under, just
because they were unable to respond quickly to fraud.

On the other hand I would like to point out the user's perspective. Recently
I've read about a case where a blind person calls a lot. Really a lot. Like
from the evening to the morning, many days a week, domestic and international
calls. It's his form of communication, since he rarely travels abroad or meets
with friends in person. So to reduce his monthly bill, he went to a provider
that promised unlimited calls. Needless to say, after a few months they've
disconnected his number and billed him for premature end of contract (it is
customary to sign 2-year contract), citing small print which mentions fair-
use.

~~~
tonfa
They have a fair use clause (at least on their VoIP contracts).

------
loup-vaillant
This sounds great. Can't wait to see the detailed terms.

Even better, it appears that Free will propose _actual_ internet connexions
with their data plan. Quoting <http://www.forfaitfree.com/> (translated from
French):

> _9h16 : According to Free, the Internet is e-mail, the web, newsgroups, P2P,
> etc. So, an actual, unrestricted internet._

I just hope they do mean to give you a public IP (I'd be content with a /64v6,
and delighted if it was a static one.)

~~~
wazoox
Free still has great usenet (including binaries) servers, while most other ISP
dropped it. Free provides only static IP addresses, and was among the firsts
to provide complete IPv6. Free is very hacker friendly; as a matter of fact,
all the "Free guys" I know are real, bearded hackers :)

~~~
delroth
They even have active support newsgroups with employees answering technical
questions.

------
gcp
Is this the same company that "reinvented" the GPL by claiming that as you
"rent" your modem (chock-full of GPL software) from them, they are not
distributing anything and they do not have to abide by the GPL?

(Feel free to correct me if they have changed their stance)

~~~
obtu
They have fixed that recently: <http://floss.freebox.fr/>

Here's the press release from FSF France (in French):
<http://fsffrance.org/news/article2011-09-14.fr.html>

------
enqk
So, unlimited data & calls for 19.99 €, with a reduced price of 15.99 € for
customers of the broadband plan. And a specially priced 2 €/month plan (60min
calls / 60sms.)

~~~
nicolas314
Subscription for 1h voice + 60 SMS per month is free (as in free beer) for
broadband customers. My kids will immediately get SIM cards! Prices available
at <http://mobile.free.fr>

~~~
agumonkey
But he said 'you can have a ..' was he specific ? one per house ? or as many
as needed ?

~~~
babebridou
the first one is free. The others are either 2€ or 14.99€

~~~
cgrand-net
Just to be clear: the first _1h plan_ is free (for broadband customers).

------
lolizbak
A great demonstration of a market disruption by pricing. Xavier Niel's show
was a mix of Jobs (staging, rhythm, ...) and Bezos (pricing, competition,
...). Wow !

~~~
babebridou
The comparison with Jobs is very far-fetched in my opinion. Niel was rude,
aggressive, partisan, almost violent with his words, and was all around not a
good orator.

The show was a blast nevertheless!

~~~
fab13n
These days, as soon as a CEO goes on stage to present his disruptive product,
and does it in a customer-oriented rather than shareholder-oriented way
(casual vocabulary, no tie), he's deemed Jobsian.

That's obviously a gross reduction of what Job's Way was, but it is Job's most
enduring legacy to the corporate communication world.

Besides, being "rude, aggressive, partisan, almost violent" sounds hardly un-
jobsy, although he tamed it down during keynotes.

------
mmahemoff
This deal is great in France, then go five minutes across any of its borders
and you'll be paying a multiple of Euros per _megabyte_.

Someone, maybe Free, needs to deal with pan-Europe roaming with the same
disruptive vigour Free is dealing with the domestic French market.

~~~
vidarh
> This deal is great in France, then go five minutes across any of its borders
> and you'll be paying a multiple of Euros per megabyte.

No you don't:

[http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/r...](http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/regulation/index_en.htm)

"As of July 2011:

Prices for mobile roaming calls are reduced further with a maximum tariff of
€0.35 per minute for calls made and €0.11 per minute for calls received.

The maximum wholesale prices for data roaming fall from €0.80 to €0.50 per
MB."

Still not cheap, but certainly not multiples of Euros per MB.

~~~
mmahemoff
Key word here is "wholesale". For the most part, it simply limits the amount
of funny-money transactions between subsidiaries, as far as I can tell.
Consumers, including the many people trying to do business in Europe, still
get fleeced at Euros per MB. Also, the directive above only applies to EU
nations, not all of Europe.

------
blahedo
This is brilliant:

 _"For example, Free.fr used the set-top box for automatically sharing a
portion of one’s broadband connection via Wi-Fi with other Free.fr
customers."_

~~~
jtheory
That's not "new", anymore -- SFR and Orange do the same as well now.

But yes, it's a great idea. As the owner of the set-top box, you're allowed to
configure it to disable that, but virtually no one does -- because the usage
from outside is always fairly minimal (but when you're traveling it can really
come in handy).

------
jtheory
Here's the part that really piqued my interest:

 _This Free.Fr free Wi-Fi network is going to play a pivotal role in the soon-
to-be-launched service, which will be using 42 Mbps HSPA+ technology. The
company has built a network of 15,000 macrocells, but those 5 million “nano
cells” are going to be the key difference maker, Niel points out.

Free.fr’s newer set-top boxes will have built-in femtocells._

I live in a rural part of France, and my village sits in a mobile signal dead
zone. My mobile phone only gets reception up in the attic of my house (0 bars,
otherwise, usually), or I can go outside and walk a half km to make a (poor
quality) call.

I do have DSL, though... is this (above) finally going to give me mobile
reception, through a set-top box?

(Please please please?)

------
swalsh
I'd be curious to see the level of quality in their service. They probably
have an advantage of the box being connected directly to their network.
However It has been my experience that femtocells are bad at switching from
the micronetwork to the macronetwork. Though my best guess is that is related
to latency..

------
sp332
How can you get 28 Mbit/s over DSL? I'm only 2 miles from my DSLAM and I can't
get more than 1.5 Mbit/s.

~~~
masklinn
It's "up to" 28Mb. But technically it's called G.992.5, colloquially known as
"ADSL2+"[0]. You need a capable DSLAM and to be close to it, and you need
good-quality phone lines.

Distance-wise, we're talking about 1km for max throughput (0.6m), 2m gives a
maximum of ~8Mb/s on ADSL2+ (may be above with very good lines providing
little attenuation). At 1.5Mb, either you're on 1.5Mb ADSL to start with, or
you have fairly crummy lines between you and your DSLAM. You should check the
attenuation.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL2%2B>

------
goodweeds
Sounds somewhat like a rip-off of republicwireless.com

~~~
toomuchtodo
Republicwireless is beholden to Sprint for the cellular side, and handles the
Wifi/termination with Amazon AWS and their Bandwidth.com hardware
(Republic/Bandwidth are the same org).

Free owns more of the infrastructure; they're not ripping off Republic, just
doing what Republic is doing better.

------
stewbrew
While this might be a nice move for people living in France, I fail to see the
relevance of this post at a global (or even European) level.

~~~
r00fus
Perhaps it's to see how we can reproduce it here. Or why we can't (possible:
over-litigious society + corrupt judiciary).

~~~
stewbrew
I have no idea what you are referring to.

------
cm-t
On live at live.free.fr

