How is their customer service? Are their product offerings priced competitively? Do they generally "go to bat" for their customers on issues like privacy and net neutrality?
On a scale of Google Fiber to Comcast, how do they rate?
Very simple commercial offering, little in the way of options and extra charges.
They design lots of their networking equipment, from the triple play boxes customer get to some of their core infrastructure.
They also keep their engineering in house, where the competition (Orange, SFR, Bouygues) relies a lot on external companies for about everything...
A very peculiar company, unlike any other in France, save maybe OVH the hosting giant.
I've had really good experiences with Tmob customer support, so I get aprehensive when there is acquistion talk.
You do know that T-Mobile is German, yes? [1]
Now, current customers of T-Mobile know the company pretty well. They know its reputation, its quality of service, its recent history, etc. If, for example, AT&T were considering acquiring T-Mobile, these customers would have some idea of what to expect. They have all heard of AT&T, know its reputation, service, etc. So they could make some reasonable assumptions about what is going to change.
However, these customers probably haven't heard of Iliad. They don't know its reputation, its quality of service, its history, anything. So making any guesses about what this acquisition would entail is very difficult.
The locations of these companies are only relevant because they give us an idea of whether most people know anything about each company. T-Mobile is based in Germany, but that doesn't matter, everyone in the US knows them anyway. Free is based in France, which does matter because most Americans have never heard of them and know nothing about them.
Not that bad, not that great, and its developers are underpaid ;) (I was one of them).