Comments on: France’s Wi-Fi gates swing open: Free Mobile activates 4M hotspots

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:17:21 +0000

The biggest issue is that it will works only with latest mobile phones… People who switch to FREE usually use cheap phones (old symbian, or windows phones)… This is also why FREE have so much issues as it is pure 3G network (no 2G at all) and they never expect so many users reusing their old 2G mobiles which redirect most call traffic to orange partner….

By: Foobar

Foobar — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:55:44 +0000

Iliad must feel hard-pressed to deploy this array of wifi hotspots.
Indeed, it is believed their roaming deal granting access to Orange’s infrastructure (including voice, 2G & HSDPA) comes at a hefty price (est. €2bn until 2015, actual figure is likely to be disclosed for their annual financial report.)

Their customer base is currently close to 3m subscribers, but a majority of which is said to have a “dirt-cheap” contract (as you put it), meaning their ARPU is relatively low.
Anyway, they can’t afford *not* relying on their own infrastructure in the long term.

By: Kevin Fitchard

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:44:43 +0000

Hi Tom,

If only the would. But they’re in a pact with Verizon, splitting the residential broadband and wireless market between them. The days in which the cable operators would have been a competitive wireless threat are long over.

By: Kevin Fitchard

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:42:36 +0000

Hi 186K,

Have you been to French city? In the big urban centers residences are built on top of businesses. These Wi-Fi hotspots are spilling out into a lot of public spaces. Sure, La Defense and train stations may be sans Wi-Fi but those areas can be filled in by Free if it so chooses.

I agree with you that we will never know the full impact of this deployment until we get a full assessment of where these hotspots are, and I’m sure Free will have to lean heavily on its own and Orange’s network still. But I think you might be selling the community Wi-Fi network short, assuming a world where everyone lives in some far flung leafy suburb and works miles away in some big steel tower.

By: Dave Wright

Dave Wright — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:15:41 +0000

Carrier WiFi deployments will be targeting the locations you describe – high density, long loiter time, urban centers. Not sure why Free can’t deploy a few of those as well.

By: Dave Wright

Dave Wright — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:05:33 +0000

Many believed that part of the proposed AWS spectrum sale from the SpectrumCo MSOs to Verizon would be bilateral arrangements towards such an MNO/Wi-Fi carrier model. Would have been interesting to see them work out the terms for that.

By: 186k

186k — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:23:05 +0000

I think you might be overstating the advantages of their hotspot network and I would be very surprised if they are able to offload “enormous amounts of traffic” as you state above. The actual number of hotspots is far less important for mobile offload than the location of the hotspots. Hotspots in the millions do not really mean that much in terms of mobile offload because the vast majority are in peoples homes and offices and offload would have happened anyway. What’s more interesting is the offload potential in the public space. How many of those 4m hotspots are actually in prime locations with high foot fall/dwell time? Finding that out will enable an assessment of whether there’s a decent offload potential. I suspect that free will continue to rely heavily on their roaming partner and will be feverishly working on improving their own cellular network

By: Alexander Puregger

Alexander Puregger — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:53:31 +0000

Kevin,

great article and 100% agreed that Free can offer such competitive offering on 3g/4g because of their WiFi integration.

Just want to add to this. While Free is big in France, the world’s FIRST AND BIGGEST WiFi network is Fon WiFi. http://www.fon.com

We, I am COO of Fon, passed 5.5 Million hotspots earlier this year. We add around 1Million every 3 to 4 months. We partner with leading telcos (British Telecom, Belgacom, Oi Brazil, MTS Russia, SFR France, and more to come soon), to build on global basis, what Free replicated locally. Our vision is a global WiFi network.

But, we like that Free is doing this as well. The more WiFi the better! Great and affordable mobile internet needs WiFi.

Alex Puregger
COO, Fon WiFi

By: John Sails

John Sails — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:44:07 +0000

4M access points sounds like a lot, but I wonder how many of them will be actually accessible when you are in the move, because a WiFi installed in a home over the a 2nd of a building (in France people lives mostly in tall buildings, not in houses) won’t be useful.

By: Anzola

Anzola — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 02:59:33 +0000

I’m a Free Mobile customer while in France €19.99 a month unlimited voice France, US, and all fixed number in Europe. Plus 3 gig data no VoIP I tether restrictions.
Innovation is the name of the game.
Carlos