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French Provider Free Could Buy US Branch of T-Mobile
Guybrush_T (980074) writes Iliad, the parent company of Free, confirmed today having made an offer to buy 56% of the U.S. branch of T-Mobile. This could be very good news for the U.S., since the provider reduced significantly the average price of mobile plans in France since they entered the mobile market two years ago. Their disruptive strategy, featuring an all-inclusive €20/month plan and a €2/month plan gathered 11% of the French market in only two years and lowered the price of plans by a factor of 5 to 10.
According to TmoNews, this was rejected.
http://www.tmonews.com/2014/07/french-telecoms-company-iliad-makes-bid-for-t-mobile-us/
Please everyone just leave T-Mobile alone. They are doing great the last few years. I don't want them ruined by Sprint or Iliad or Dish or anyone else!
Competition is good and T-Mobile is proof of it. Even if you don't use T-Mobile and never will, you have STILL BENEFITED from many of the things they have done lately which have been forcing other carriers to make changes.
Just today:
"T-Mobile posted its second quarter earnings today, and the carrier is continuing momentum as far as customer acquisition is concerned. The Uncarrier managed to add an additional 1.5 million customers in the second quarter, which makes it the fifth consecutive quarter in which the carrier added more than 1 million subscribers. The influx of new customers meant that T-Mobile's revenue rose by 15.4 percent to $7.2 billion. 50 million total subscribers now."
20 euros is inclusive of taxes. France taxes are not super heavy, but still on the upper side, and I'd bet US taxes are lower overall.
When I lived in France I had Free. Excellent service, very disruptive market strategy. I'm very excited with the news. I'd switch in an eyelash.
The west coast in general has good TMo coverage (all the cities including the little ones, every time I checked when driving the I-5 from Seattle to SF, and the local ski areas) but the only other place I've checked was in DC (where it was fine). However, I scarcely even consider that "travel". For *REAL* travel, TMo is by far the best carrier option. I spent a month in Europe earlier this year. Six countries, and I had service everywhere in every one of them including on the Swiss ski slopes. I sent/received well over a thousand texts and a number of MMS, streamed music all day (at 128Kbps, that adds up fast), did email and web browsing and so forth, and Skyped with friends and family. I also received several calls which I let go to voicemail, then checked the voicemails. All on my normal US T-Mobile SIM card.
Extra cost for all that stuff while abroad? $0.00.
It would have cost something to use voice calls over the cellular network, but with things like Skype or Google Voice (plus the free and unlimited - though not super-fast - data), that was never needed. T-Mo's "WiFi Calling" feature also lets you make or receive calls, while overseas, without any charge as long as you're on WiFi. I'm planning to visit Indonesia soon, and T-Mobile says I'll be covered there too. It's a *fantastic* carrier for people who travel.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Before launching their mobile telephony offering and forcing the previous oligopoly to slash their prices, Free did the same with ADSL Internet (and ISTR with dialup before that). I pay something like USD 45/month for:
- uncapped broadband with static IP and valid rDNS (living in an area well covered by DSL that is about 17 Mbps down, but if/when their fiber gets here I'll pay the same price for 1 Gbps!)
- plus unlimited telephone to fixed and mobiles in France, to fixed in some 100 other countries and to mobile in some countries, relatively low rates otherwise
- a SIM card with unlimited SMS, 50Gb 3G/4G data/month, 2 hours phone (the unlimited version would set me back some USD 22/month more) and extremely competitive rates for anything not included
- Some 600 television channels (some of which you have to pay extra for, sure), with timeshifting, pay-per-view video on demand, and free replay (usually the last week of popular series, depending on the channel)
- an ADSL box "Freebox", extremely well thought out (hello Rani) with a really excellent user interface (web browser, games, what have you), a 4-port gigabit switch, a Blu-Ray reader, a 250 GB disk that can be used as a NAS and for recording television programs
- lots of techie goodies (IPv6 if I want it, messages left on my answering machine can be forwarded to an e-mail address, I can force certain MACs to an IP so that I have the same IP whether connected by WiFi or Ethernet, and, and, and, isn't there a length limit on comments here?)
I'm looking at moving to the US (like SF or NY, https://www.linkedin.com/pub/l... ), so I read the Comcast horror stories with interest. In comparison, I have called Free tech support once in six years, after a storm killed my Freebox. It was replaced (without charge I believe), and nobody even hinted that I might like to buy anything more. If they manage to buy a US provider, no question, I'll be their client.