Free is a French telecommunications company, subsidiary of

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Odys ...

that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications to consumers in France. Its head office is in the 8th arrondissement of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and it is the second-largest

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

in France. Free provides ISP services in France and in the 30

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...

countries. It was the first company to offer a " triple play" service in France through its self-produced singular

Freebox The Freebox is an ADSL-VDSL-FTTH modem and a set-top box that the French Internet service provider named Free (part of the Iliad group) provides to its DSL-FTTH subscribers. Its main use is as a high-end fixed and wireless modem (802.11g MIMO), ...

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

, claiming to have invented the '' box'' marketing concept in France in reference to all the other French

s who thereafter released "triple play"

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

s named to include the anglicism ''box'' as a suffix. These ''boxes'' provide comprehensive telecommunication services such as

high-speed internet Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet ...

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

and

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...

packages, leading Free to become the world's number one IPTV provider offering almost systematically IPTV to subscribers and optimizing it to be available on most landlines. Developing its own 3G and 4G networks, Free Mobile was launched in 2012 and became the fourth mobile network operator in France.

History

1999–2001

Free was the third ISP in France to offer

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

access without a subscription or a surcharged phone number, on 26 April 1999. Unlike its predecessors in the niche of access without subscription ( World Online on 1999-04-01 and on 1999-04-19), Free's offer was not restricted in time or number of subscribers. In 2002, Free was the first

to provide a V.92 connection.

2002-2003: ADSL at a disruptive price

Since September 2002, Free contributed significantly to French

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

boom. The offer was able to launch as soon as the incumbent was forced to stop abuse of dominant position and to apply fair wholesale prices.

2004-2006: Unbundled ADSL and "triple play"

Unbundling, in France, refers to the obligation for the incumbent carrier

France Telecom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

to lease the

Local loop In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the commo ...

, because it is a

natural monopoly A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming adv ...

. Although the unbundling process was intended to start by 2000, the actual unbundling process actually started at the end of 2002, after a long conflict between the French regulation authority ARCEP and the non-cooperative incumbent. Free has to pay a rental fee of €9 per month and per subscriber to the incumbent for the

Twisted pair Twisted pair cabling is a type of wiring used for communications in which two conductors of a single circuit are twisted together for the purposes of improving electromagnetic compatibility. Compared to a single conductor or an untwisted ba ...

Copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

between the area central office and the subscriber premises. Although more expensive than the real cost of €7.63, this solution is still far more profitable than the bundled option. Since January 2003, a ''Freenaut'' has maintained an unofficial website, showing figures and graphics about Free unbundled network deployment (Free Unbundling). Another ''Freenaut'' website has provided network status monitoring maps Unbundling status and location since the end of 2003. These initiatives are made possible thanks to the transparency of Free's network: their equipment replies to

ping Ping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Ping, a domesticated Chinese duck in the illustrated book '' The Story about Ping'', first published in 1933 * Ping, a minor character in ''Seinfeld'', an NBC sitcom * Ping, a c ...

and has a meaningful reverse DNS.

2007-present: Fiber to the home

On 11 November 2006, Free announced the deployment of a new fiber to the home (FTTH) network for its subscribers. The initial plan's goal is to cover Paris as well as some towns in the Paris suburbs and selected neighborhoods in other French cities by 2012. By December 2007, the work was 30% finished, and the remaining work was progressing "at a furious pace". On 31 August 2007, Free updated the offer with more details. Download bandwidth shall be 100 Mbit/s and TV services shall be available for two televisions, at the same price of €29.99/month. Free has developed its own fiber network technology, called Iliad P2P, based on

Ethernet in the First Mile Ethernet in the first mile (EFM) refers to using one of the Ethernet family of computer network technologies between a telecommunications company and a customer's premises. From the customer's point of view, it is their first mile, although from th ...

and having a point to point (P2P)

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...

. High curvature optic fibers are manufactured by the Dutch company Draka. The

deployment Deployment may refer to: Engineering and software Concepts * Blue-green deployment, a method of installing changes to a web, app, or database server by swapping alternating production and staging servers * Continuous deployment, a software e ...

is still essentially in the horizontal phase (the vertical phase being connection to the subscriber premises), and large-scale deployment to customers is foreseen. On 26 June 2008, and the mayor inaugurated Free's FTTH network in a district of Montpellier. In March 2008,

made the commitment to cover Paris at 75% by the second half of 2009, and reiterated its goal to connect 4 million French homes to its own FTTH network by 2012. Significant volumes of subscribers will be connected as soon as the legislative framework is in place, expected by ARCEP for autumn 2009.

Offers

Voiceband

Extent

The

Voiceband A voice frequency (VF) or voice band is the range of audio frequencies used for the transmission of speech. Frequency band In telephony, the usable voice frequency band ranges from approximately 300 to 3400 Hz. It is for this reason th ...

Dial-up internet access offer counts for a very small number of subscribers currently, as 98% of French homes were eligible for

in 2006.

Pricing

Free began its activities with the famous free-of-charge Internet access, although data

phone calls A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. First telephone call The first telephone call was made on March 10, 1876, by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell demonstrated his ability to "ta ...

fees are not included. Another offer combines an Internet access with 50 hours of data

for 14.94

euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...

s per month.

Freebox offer

Initially, Freebox was the name of the Freebox device, which consists of the

Set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

and

Modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

. Because of the device's popularity and reputation, it eventually became the name of the offer. * Price: 29.99

s; * Best

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

connectivity Connectivity may refer to: Computing and technology * Connectivity (media), the ability of the social media to accumulate economic capital from the users connections and activities * Internet connectivity, the means by which individual terminal ...

available for the subscriber home: FTTH, unbundled or bundled; * " Triple play" (broadband bundled connection) or "quadruple play" (broadband unbundled or FTTH connection) services; * Free-of-charge migration to better

when available to subscriber; * Possibility to update the

device; the upgrade price decreases with time and is free of charge after three years of subscription; * A /60

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

prefix.

Services

Internet access

;Early IPv6 deployment According to a study published by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

at the

RIPE Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE, French for "European IP Networks") is a forum open to all parties with an interest in the technical development of the Internet. The RIPE community's objective is to ensure that the administrative and technical coor ...

meeting in October 2008, Free is probably the largest native

in the

World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

. By end 2008, almost all French

traffic measured in the study comes from Free customers. Free deployed the

infrastructure in only 5 weeks, from 7 November to 11 December 2007, thanks to an innovative 6rd (IPv6 rapid deployment) proposal by

Rémi Després Rémi Després (born January 16, 1943) is a French engineer and entrepreneur known for his contributions on data networking. Education In 1961–1963, Rémi Després attended École Polytechnique of Paris, of which he holds an Engineer degree. ...

. ; Wi-Fi community network In May 2009 Free reconfigured the set-top boxes to act as Wi-Fi hotspots by default. With over 3 million hotspots, it is thought to be the largest Wi-Fi hotspot network in the world during that time. They require authentication which makes them only accessible to Free's ADSL and now

mobile Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Mobile ( ...

customers. Their main use is thus to let customers away from home continue accessing the Internet using the ADSL connection of other Free customer within Wi-Fi range. For security reasons this access is isolated from the ADSL user's normal Wi-Fi network, and is given lower priority.

Telephone

;Included telephone calls In 2003, Free introduced unlimited phone calls at no additional price, while other phone operators or

s charged per-minute fees for telephone calls. Competitors have then been forced to imitate these changes, but with fewer destinations included or at an additional price. Bundled Free subscribers enjoy same free calls as those unbundled since March 2004. Calls to United States and Canada have been free of charge since December 2005. In 2006, Free and

were in conflict against an unfair increase of

Neuf Cegetel Neuf Cegetel was a French Wireline (networking), wireline telecommunications service provider and a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). It offered various telecommunications services to consumers, enterprises and wholesale customers, ranking ...

own termination tariff, aimed at undermining unlimited phone offers in France. The French regulator ARCEP then decided to apply a threshold for call termination. Unlimited free phone calls have been perennial in France since then.

Telephone services

A wide range of telephone services are provided at no additional cost, such as an online

answering machine An answering machine, answerphone or message machine, also known as telephone messaging machine (or TAM) in the United Kingdom, UK and some Commonwealth countries, ansaphone or ansafone (from a trade name), or telephone answering device (TAD), ...

ringback tone Ringing tone (audible ringing, also ringback tone) is a signaling tone in telecommunication that is heard by the originator of a telephone call while the destination terminal is alerting the receiving party. The tone is typically a repeated caden ...

customization,

call transfer A call transfer is a telecommunications mechanism that enables a user to relocate an existing telephone call to another phone or attendant console, using a transfer button or a switchhook flash and dialing the required location. The transferred ...

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call i ...

, inbound and outbound call filtering,

conference call A conference call is a telephone call in which someone talks to several people at the same time. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call or set up so that the called party merely listens into ...

s, and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...

SIP. Since April 2007, each customer has been assigned a fax number in addition to the traditional phone number. This additional line is dedicated to the online faxing service.

Television

IPTV leader

According to a study published in 2008 by Light Reading, Free is ''by far'' the largest

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded med ...

carrier in the

. This fact is also confirmed by the TV Markets Quarterly Monitoring.

ARDP protocol creator

Access rights of television channels are applied securely without requiring any

smartcard A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

, thanks to the ARDP protocol created by Free and submitted to the community through the IETF.

Freebox device

The sole property of Free, the

device is loaned to the customer for the duration of the ADSL contract. More than a simple ADSL modem, it is the primary conduit through which Free provides many of its services. It also replaces many devices that customers may otherwise have to purchase and thus provides added value of its own. Customers wishing to use newer models — such as the Freebox Revolution — must pay an extra fee. The latest revision is actually composed of two parts: * A 'Server' device which houses an ADSL / optical fiber modem, 4 port gigabit switch, 802.11n/b/g Wifi access point/hotspot, powerline networking, router, 250GB NAS (extensible through USB and eSATA), wired and

DECT Digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (Digital European cordless telecommunications), usually known by the acronym DECT, is a standard primarily used for creating cordless telephone systems. It originated in Europe, where it is the common ...

wireless phone base, UPnP media server and more. * A 'Player' set-top box which acts as an HD DVB recorder (using the Freebox Server NAS), TV over internet player,

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

player, gaming console equipped with a gamepad and motion sensing remote, web browser.

Other services

* Unlimited Email addresses (1 GB each), web GUI based on Zimbra Collaboration Suite * 10 GB personal pages ( PHP,

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

/ PostgreSQL, web tools such as

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

) * Large file exchange (up to 10 GB) with features such as

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" o ...

movie player, etc...

Corporate affairs

Market share

Since August 2008, the parent company

(including Free and Alice brands) is the second-largest

in France. The leader is

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

(former

state monopoly In economics, a government monopoly or public monopoly is a form of coercive monopoly in which a government agency or government corporation is the sole provider of a particular good or service and competition is prohibited by law. It is a monopo ...

company

), and the third is SFR. In 2007 (a major consolidation year in the French

market), Free was the only

brand to gain market share. Free was the second-largest French

until end June 2007, when competitor

acquired (

T-Online t-online.de is a German news portal, owned and published by digital multi-channel media company Ströer. It reaches over 179 million visits per month coming from 29 million unique visitors. The editorial team is located in Berlin. History I ...

France).

used to grow essentially by purchasing its competitors, until it was itself absorbed by SFR. Until 2009, Free has always had a higher

organic growth Organic business growth is related to the growth of natural systems and organisms, societies and economies, as a dynamic organizational process, that for business expansion is marked by increased output, customer base expansion, or new product devel ...

than

and SFR.

regained its second place after buying "Alice Telecom" from

Telecom Italia Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fixed ...

in the summer of 2008. Until the purchase of Alice France, Free's subscribers growth was exclusively organic, except for the strategic acquisition of the FTTH

in 2006 (about 500 subscribers). * Free has the lowest

churn rate Churn rate (sometimes called attrition rate), in its broadest sense, is a measure of the number of individuals or items moving out of a collective group over a specific period. It is one of two primary factors that determine the steady-state level ...

amongst French

providers, below 1% per month. *

targets 4 million

Broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

(

and FTTH) subscribers by 2010 and an unbundling ratio of 85%.

Profitability

Free claims to be the first profitable

in France and to have the lowest subscriber acquisition cost amongst French

operators Operator may refer to: Mathematics * A symbol indicating a mathematical operation * Logical operator or logical connective in mathematical logic * Operator (mathematics), mapping that acts on elements of a space to produce elements of another sp ...

. The unbundling ratio is one of the key strategic figures: * Free has QoS control on unbundled lines since these are

connected Connected may refer to: Film and television * ''Connected'' (2008 film), a Hong Kong remake of the American movie ''Cellular'' * '' Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology'', a 2011 documentary film * ''Connected'' (2015 TV ...

to Free's own DSLAMs instead of

DSLAMs. * Bundled lines generate expensive

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

fees paid to the

incumbent The incumbent is the current holder of an office or position, usually in relation to an election. In an election for president, the incumbent is the person holding or acting in the office of president before the election, whether seeking re-ele ...

. * TV

multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with ...

is not provided by

DSLAMs. Because of bandwidth cost, only a subset of the TV services is offered to bundled subscribers; while unbundled subscribers can access value-added services such as VOD and Subscription VOD. These services'

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...

s are constantly increasing. In 2007, Free had the greatest EBITDA margin of the sector in Europe, was the only actor to gain market share in France and had a

debt Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or other agreed-upon value to another party, the creditor. Debt is a deferred payment, or series of payments, which differentiates it from an immediate purchase. The ...

ratio 10 times lower than the industry average. Thanks to these assets, the initial FTTH deployment (targeted at 2012) will be entirely self-financed by existing activities. Although investors are concerned about the investments in both the 3G mobile network and an FTTH network (1 billion euros each), the perspectives of Free and of the whole sector in Europe are promising according to analysts.

Logos and slogans

File:FreeFirstLogo.png, The original logo featuring a jumping character and the first slogan. File:LogoFree.png, The simplified logo, used since 2006.

Culture

Disruptive

Free is the last

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

operator in France.

, in the first years of its existence, was sometimes suggested as a comparison for the Free spirit. Unlike all other French broadband

ISPs An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

, nearly everything is designed within the company: Freebox devices, DSLAMs,

network switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destination device. A netw ...

es and the backend billing system. The company has a medium- and long-term industrial strategy rather than the short-term financial strategy of its competitors. Free is often designated by journalists as the "broadband maverick", the "troublemaker of the Internet", a "do-it-yourselfer", a "pioneer in IPTV", a "truly disruptive company", the "

geek The word ''geek'' is a slang term originally used to describe eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit. In the past, it had a general ...

's ISP", the "cactus of the telecoms", the "Broadband Rebel", "one of the greatest French industrial successes of the last twenty years", a "Silicon Valley success story", a "Robin Hood", an "Uncle Scrooge", a "nightmare vision for Orange, SFR and Bouygues".

Openness

The ISP, as well as its owner

Xavier Niel Xavier Niel (born 25 August 1967) is a French billionaire businessman involved in the telecommunications and technology industry. He is best known as founder and majority shareholder of the French Internet service provider and mobile operator I ...

, promote free and

media, such as: * Television channels that have emerged through

thanks to fair and handy broadcast conditions: Nolife and Arrêt sur images. * Toll-free legal music streaming:

Deezer Deezer is a French online music streaming service. It allows users to listen to music content from record labels, as well as podcasts on various devices online or offline. Created in Paris, Deezer currently has 90 million licensed tracks in ...

. *

TV 2.0 Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

: since June 2007, ''Freenauts'' can broadcast their own TV channel by plugging a simple analog camera into the

. * Emerging alternative press in France:

Mediapart ''Mediapart'' is an independent French investigative online newspaper created in 2008 by Edwy Plenel, former editor-in-chief of ''Le Monde''. ''Mediapart'' is published in French, English and Spanish. ''Mediapart's'' income is solely derived ...

, Bakchich, , and . * Video publishing platform vpod.tv.

Corporate culture

Corporate culture appears obvious from these remarkable facts: * The call center is run almost entirely on

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

-based PCs. * On startup, each Freebox HD device was displaying Rock'n'roll on his LCD screen. * On advertising pictures, the time displayed by the Freebox device is 13:37 (

leet Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. ...

). * In February 2000, Xavier Niel offered 10 million

francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centu ...

directors to buy their search engine activities in France (the offer was declined). * The name Free was chosen in 1999 two weeks before the launch of the service, and eventually became the company's name, the other candidate name being Online * The

device name was inspired by the name of a pack of cigarettes.

Popularity in France

''Freenaut'' is the common designation for each internaut using the Internet through a Free connection. This community is estimated to reach between 10 and 12 million individuals as of March 2009. The ''Freenaut'' community includes a core group of technology enthusiasts who contribute to Free's influence and popularity in several ways: * User

web sites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...

hosted by Free for free. * Live shows presenters. * developers (news, weather, games, video blogs, alternate TV interfaces...). * Free

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

writers. * Developers of software. * Contributors to Free bugtracker. * Network monitoring, unbundling curve graphs and FTTH deployment maps. According to recurrent

audience measurement Audience measurement measures how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic on websites. Sometim ...

reports conducted by Médiamétrie, Free's general portal is the fourth most popular

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

in France. During peak load hours, Free accounts for nearly half the traffic on the

Amsterdam Internet Exchange The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) is an Internet exchange point based in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Established in the early 1990s, AMS-IX is a non-profit, neutral and independent peering point. History In February 1994, a layer 2 ...

Criticism

On 3 January 2013 at 4pm in France, Free released a new firmware for its latest modem named "Revolution" which contained an advertisement blocker. The firmware of the modems was updated when rebooting, and the Ad filtering was enabled by default. Within a few hours, Free gained media attention and was strongly criticized by website editors for penalizing them instead of Free's target Google. On 7 January at 8.30am, the Ad filtering was removed before Free ultimately decided, on 17 January at 6pm, to include the Ad filter and disable it by default. However, customers who restarted their modem between the 3 and 7 January had enabled the option without even knowing it. Since Free is one of the biggest ISP in France, worries started to raise of French hosting forums concerning the people's interest into Ad blockers in general.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Free (ISP) Telecommunications companies of France Internet service providers of France French business families

History

1999–2001

2002-2003: ADSL at a disruptive price

2004-2006: Unbundled ADSL and "triple play"

2007-present: Fiber to the home

Offers

Voiceband

Extent

Pricing

Freebox offer

Services

Internet access

Telephone

Telephone services

Television

IPTV leader

ARDP protocol creator

Freebox device

Other services

Corporate affairs

Market share

Profitability

Logos and slogans

Culture

Disruptive

Openness

Corporate culture

Popularity in France

Criticism

See also

General

Services

References

Further reading

External links