Comments on: YouTube sucks on French ISP Free, and French regulators want to know why

By: Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 10:06:40 +0000

I am also a Free user and have done a simple test comparing You Tube and Dailymotion performance. Clearly the play catches up with the cache in You Tube and then stops while waiting for a further cache. Dailymotion plays fine.

By: Francis

Francis — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 21:40:30 +0000

Surely if customers want to get to YouTube, the ISP could offer a bundle with fast YouTube speeds and charge those customers accordingly. By charging those customers, that would pay for the interconnect upgrade?

By: Marco

Marco — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:53:15 +0000

Disclaimer: I am a (long-time) Free ISP subscriber.

IMHO, the latest backlash to install an opt-out adblock filtering at the box level is bad and will hurt the 2.0 economy as a whole.
This said, Free purportedly reinvests most of its profits into infrastructure (operating at DSLAMs, fibering buildings, deploying a nationwide 3G wireless network). I reckon they would like Google to pay some part of what it costs to bring content to end users.
The problem here is the private peering between Google(Youtube) is saturated so they either need to upgrade their interco link or transit through 3rd parties – Cogent, L3, et al – and it has a cost.
So who is wrong here? More so on the ISP side, I reckon. Free outright refuses GOOG install cache servers at a PoP, they want to be paid for the traffic.

By: Val

Val — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:05:11 +0000

And now, in reply, ISP Free block Google Adsense :
http://www.lesechos.fr/entreprises-secteurs/tech-medias/actu/0202479067147-free-provoque-google-en-bloquant-sa-publicite-525351.php

By: albertocalle

albertocalle — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 20:00:32 +0000

Free is slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter when trying to load a youtube video, or downloading whatever from Play Store or Google Drive, or, in general, using any Google service. Besides, they added today an Adblock-like system to avoid ads (who said ‘fuck Google AdWords?’) in their topbox system (included with Free ADSL).
And yes, I’m a Free (ADSL and Mobile) user in Paris.

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:26:37 +0000

Thank you for the spelling note. I changed it throughout. And unfortunately I feel your pain. The challenge is similar here in the U.S. and is becoming more noticeable to the end users. Because of my job, I’m aware of what’s happening, but even so it’s hard to blame one cause when there are so many variables. Online video is going to be a big story for 2013 in terms of licensing content and delivering it to end users.

By: Karen Kazaryan

Karen Kazaryan — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:51:29 +0000

Consumers already pay for traffic. And petty ISP arguments about internet services somehow not paying their “fair share” were debunked many times by now.

By: Yann Varenne

Yann Varenne — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:13:25 +0000

From a user’s point of view, it does really suck. Even with a 16 mbps connection, it is almost impossible to play a Youtube Video without lag, even during daytime. We just stopped using Youtube, which is a shame.

By: juliusbeezer

juliusbeezer — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:00:32 +0000

Yup. Free.fr customer in Nantes, supposedly a hi-tech industrial city. Online video sucks here, especially in the evenings, when it becomes UNUSABLY SLOW. God only knows what it’s like in the sticks. Sort it out!

[Bah oui. Je suis client de free.fr à Nantes, centre industriel avancé prétendu. La vidéo en-ligne est très lente, surtout aux soirs, quand elle est inutilisable. Dieu seul sait comment ça marche en France profonde. Débrouillez-vous!]

By: nicolas.richer@gmail.com

nicolas.richer@gmail.com — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 09:22:29 +0000

Disclaimer : I’m French and my ISP is Free.

All of the statements are quite right : we all feel as we are hostages of this conflict and this is a big reason why the government is getting into it. But what was really interesting is that as soon as the story was featured in the newspaper, the quality connection increased suddenly. So we wait fot the next event to happen, hoping we could all watch Youtube decently.

By the way, the correct spelling of our consumer group is “UFC Que Choisir”.