6 ms·

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

by mekoka 15y ago

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.

sasvari 15y ago
Is that really the case? In other parts of Europe we don't have Free, and still prices for mobile and internet (speed might be better in a lot of areas as well, especially considering the price/speed ratio) are way more convenient, AFAIK.
- tonfa 15y ago
  France is still one of the cheapest country for landline internet (the standard price is ~30 EUR/month for 20+ Mb/s, with unlimited landline calls and tv).
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    France from what I hear is ahead, but the UK, Italy, Germany and Ireland that I know of are nowhere near as backwards as the US in respect of mobile access.
  - albxn 15y ago
    Yes. Thanks to Free. They created the box (internet + tv), the price point, unlimited landline calls.
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    That's about right for Greece as well, if I recall correctly.
  - danieldk 15y ago
    In The Netherlands an all-inclusive package starts at 37.50 Euro per month (20MBit DSL-only subscriptions are around 20 Euro per month). Extra bandwidth is also relatively cheap, I am on a 120/10 MBit [1] cable connection (with TV and telephone) for 67 Euro per month. There is also healthy competition, most ISPs offer comparable prices, except for one ISP (XS4All) who use their reputation from their glory years to overcharge royally. [1] In practice I usually get speeds between 120 and 130 MBit downstream.
babebridou 15y ago
> 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 15y ago
  References please
  - babebridou 15y ago
    As requested: Biography in English http://www.economist.com/node/14402214?story_id=14402214 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-obscur-du-patron-de-free http://www.liberation.fr/societe/010160359-le-x-versant-obsc... http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/prison-avec-sursis-pour-xavier-niel_460958.html http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/prison-avec-sursi... 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-niel-futur-maitre-du-monde-615051 http://www.capital.fr/enquetes/hommes-et-affaires/xavier-nie... 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.
Loic 15y ago
Do not forget that France Telecom had at the time of opening the market the best network in Europe with a totally homogeneous DSLAM setup and incredibly good backbone. With the rules to force FT to open its systems to the other players, it was possible for them to piggy back on the best network, offer an incredibly good quality of service for very cheap while at the same time build their own network. So, you can thanks the ARCEP and FT. In Germany this was not the case and the quality over the country varies a lot. If you are lucky you have as good or better than in France, if not you have a 1 Mbps connection.
slug 15y ago
No, US is the anomaly, since other countries in Europe have better/cheaper offers both for mobile and fixed connections (dsl,cable,fiber). I agree with the poster above, the US mobile and broadband offers are a joke and for that reason I also use a cheap prepaid and make most of my calls through voip. Initially coming from Europe, I started with a ISDN line at 128kbit/s about 14 years ago and 9k6 mobile connection through a cheap gsm phone with internal modem (it accepted AT commands and I built a simple adapter to connect to my laptop). Later on I migrated to cable at roughly twice the speed and for the past ten years had increase in speed and same or price reductions due to competition (3g, dsl, fiber). Now for the same monthly payments I have here in the US, over there I have 3 times the bandwidth over cable, and this service also allows me to purchase a cheap USB dongle to use the same subscriber account for 3G mobile data access. Not only that, the increase in speed has been mostly non-existent for the years I've been in the US, although living in a large and densely populated city...
jusob 15y ago
What made Free, and the other competitors, possible was the French FTC forcing France Telecom to open to the competition at a fair price. Once real cometition could happened, prices went down fast while speed went up. There is no nation monopoly in the US, but many local monopolies. I used to leave in an apartment complex were the only choice for broadband was Comcast (we could not get DSL). Even in the silicon valley, we have very few options for broadband.

by mekoka 15y ago

sasvari 15y ago

Is that really the case? In other parts of Europe we don't have Free, and still prices for mobile and internet (speed might be better in a lot of areas as well, especially considering the price/speed ratio) are way more convenient, AFAIK.

tonfa 15y ago
France is still one of the cheapest country for landline internet (the standard price is ~30 EUR/month for 20+ Mb/s, with unlimited landline calls and tv).
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  France from what I hear is ahead, but the UK, Italy, Germany and Ireland that I know of are nowhere near as backwards as the US in respect of mobile access.
- albxn 15y ago
  Yes. Thanks to Free. They created the box (internet + tv), the price point, unlimited landline calls.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  That's about right for Greece as well, if I recall correctly.
- danieldk 15y ago
  In The Netherlands an all-inclusive package starts at 37.50 Euro per month (20MBit DSL-only subscriptions are around 20 Euro per month). Extra bandwidth is also relatively cheap, I am on a 120/10 MBit [1] cable connection (with TV and telephone) for 67 Euro per month. There is also healthy competition, most ISPs offer comparable prices, except for one ISP (XS4All) who use their reputation from their glory years to overcharge royally. [1] In practice I usually get speeds between 120 and 130 MBit downstream.

babebridou 15y ago

> 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 15y ago
References please
- babebridou 15y ago
  As requested: Biography in English http://www.economist.com/node/14402214?story_id=14402214 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-obscur-du-patron-de-free http://www.liberation.fr/societe/010160359-le-x-versant-obsc... http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/prison-avec-sursis-pour-xavier-niel_460958.html http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/prison-avec-sursi... 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-niel-futur-maitre-du-monde-615051 http://www.capital.fr/enquetes/hommes-et-affaires/xavier-nie... 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.

Loic 15y ago

Do not forget that France Telecom had at the time of opening the market the best network in Europe with a totally homogeneous DSLAM setup and incredibly good backbone. With the rules to force FT to open its systems to the other players, it was possible for them to piggy back on the best network, offer an incredibly good quality of service for very cheap while at the same time build their own network. So, you can thanks the ARCEP and FT. In Germany this was not the case and the quality over the country varies a lot. If you are lucky you have as good or better than in France, if not you have a 1 Mbps connection.

slug 15y ago

No, US is the anomaly, since other countries in Europe have better/cheaper offers both for mobile and fixed connections (dsl,cable,fiber). I agree with the poster above, the US mobile and broadband offers are a joke and for that reason I also use a cheap prepaid and make most of my calls through voip. Initially coming from Europe, I started with a ISDN line at 128kbit/s about 14 years ago and 9k6 mobile connection through a cheap gsm phone with internal modem (it accepted AT commands and I built a simple adapter to connect to my laptop). Later on I migrated to cable at roughly twice the speed and for the past ten years had increase in speed and same or price reductions due to competition (3g, dsl, fiber). Now for the same monthly payments I have here in the US, over there I have 3 times the bandwidth over cable, and this service also allows me to purchase a cheap USB dongle to use the same subscriber account for 3G mobile data access. Not only that, the increase in speed has been mostly non-existent for the years I've been in the US, although living in a large and densely populated city...

jusob 15y ago

What made Free, and the other competitors, possible was the French FTC forcing France Telecom to open to the competition at a fair price. Once real cometition could happened, prices went down fast while speed went up. There is no nation monopoly in the US, but many local monopolies. I used to leave in an apartment complex were the only choice for broadband was Comcast (we could not get DSL). Even in the silicon valley, we have very few options for broadband.