3 ms·

I don't think so. Most of his success with Free Telecom is by putting the customer first, which led to fair pricing for both broadband and mobile and no-bullshi

I don't think so. Most of his success with Free Telecom is by putting the customer first, which led to fair pricing for both broadband and mobile and no-bullshit mobile plans that are impossible to understand. His plans were "a single, affordable, all unlimited plan". Now, he's said to be pretty ruthless in a business setting, but it's because he's basically the only self-made billionaire in France (all the others have inherited) and he couldn't play by the rules because the rules were stacked against him. Thanks to this guy I pay less than 40 euros/month for 1Gbps unlimited fiber at home, with a fixed ipv4. I pay 16 euros a month for my mobile plan, with unlimited everything, including while roaming in Europe or North America. He didn't do that by exploiting his employees like Jeff, he did it by not taking part of the telecom oligopoly who used to milk customers (surprisingly they had no problem to align with his prices to keep their business). He didn't do it by selling out his users data to third party, on the contrary he provided adblocking tech right in the broadband router you get with your subscription. I'm not saying he's a saint, you can't become a billionaire without screwing a bunch of people, but he's clearly better than most billionaires especially the ones you cited.

maeln 6y ago
I would still argue that Free use to have the best of the best customer service. I remember in the early 2010', when you were calling them, you usually had somebody that spoke perfectly and was very technically savy. Now, their customer service, while not awful, is no better than the other operator, which is a shame. Their fight with Google for the Youtube bandwidth was really not putting their customer first also. Their problem was maybe justified, but being a Free customer, you were paying the price for it with Youtube being sometimes barely usable. Same happened, and still happen sometime with Twitch and Netflix. Their 4g coverage is still garbage in a lot of place also and definitely worse than any other operator. Overall these days, they are not so much better than the other big telco. But I have to agree that they really shook up the market and that was really beneficial. And they are still pushing and innovating, arguably less than before, which keep the competition going.
rakoo 6y ago
What you say is totally true and if not for him we'd all be paying somwhere twice as much for the same bandwidth and possibly with a data cap, but I feel it's more objective that Free Telecom started as "the challenger against the system" but today it definitely is part of the system. It's still teasing its competitors on their extremities, but nothing fundamentally as big as its two uppercuts when it entered the game (I absolutely don't blame them for settling in, I just feel it's fair to paint a proper snapshot of what the situation is today)

maeln 6y ago

I would still argue that Free use to have the best of the best customer service. I remember in the early 2010', when you were calling them, you usually had somebody that spoke perfectly and was very technically savy. Now, their customer service, while not awful, is no better than the other operator, which is a shame. Their fight with Google for the Youtube bandwidth was really not putting their customer first also. Their problem was maybe justified, but being a Free customer, you were paying the price for it with Youtube being sometimes barely usable. Same happened, and still happen sometime with Twitch and Netflix. Their 4g coverage is still garbage in a lot of place also and definitely worse than any other operator. Overall these days, they are not so much better than the other big telco. But I have to agree that they really shook up the market and that was really beneficial. And they are still pushing and innovating, arguably less than before, which keep the competition going.

rakoo 6y ago

What you say is totally true and if not for him we'd all be paying somwhere twice as much for the same bandwidth and possibly with a data cap, but I feel it's more objective that Free Telecom started as "the challenger against the system" but today it definitely is part of the system. It's still teasing its competitors on their extremities, but nothing fundamentally as big as its two uppercuts when it entered the game (I absolutely don't blame them for settling in, I just feel it's fair to paint a proper snapshot of what the situation is today)