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Comment by erispoe | Hacker News Reader

Xavier Niel is the founder, not the director. He donated money for it.

He's one of the only french businessmen having actually disturbed anything in France, a country where "innovation" is usually driven by publicly owned big companies and public grants. He has driven telecommunication prices down dramatically with his internet provider company, and then his mobile phone carrier. Internet is cheap in France mainly thanks to him.

I trust him probably more than anybody else in France to actually achieve something disturbing the system in place, precisely because he's one of the very very few that has done it before and he does not come from the elite making system of "grandes écoles".

Amusing fact, he started his fortune with sex messaging newtorks on the french precursor of internet, the Minitel.

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> Internet is cheap in France mainly thanks to him.

And I'm pretty sure we have one of the best offers in the world for mobile plans thanks to him as well. I haven't seen a lot of places in the world where you can get pay on the go unlimited calls/texts/data for such low prices (10€/m)

The downside of Free is that they fight mostly on price. They did interesting things with mobile plans, but mainly they drive the prices down, and everything else with it (speed, quality, etc.).

France used to have some of the best internet access in the world, only behind the like of South Korea or Japan. Now it's down to #30 [1]. Same (or even worse) for mobile networks: 4G took forever to come to France. Investing in better infrastructures is expensive, and ROI is just not there to be on the cutting edge anymore.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_c...

I would not hurry up blaming the prices.

We can have a look at USA with probably the most expensive internet / mobile plans and worst internet (excluding undeveloped countries). On the other hand, there are many emerging EU countries like Lithuania, where you can get stable 4G across a country for 5 eur/month.

Of course prices are not the only reason. Population density, local monopolies, legacy infrastructures, etc. also play a huge role in quality of access. But I don't think the idea that price wars take a toll on quality of service is particularly controversial.

I have Free and I have SFR and I can't tell the difference except the SFR bill is far higher. With Free I don't pay much so my expectations are curtailed (outages, useless CSR, occassional slow speeds). With SFR I pay more, expect more, and get far less.

FFS, I just received a bill from the hussier about a service SFR never provided, billed me for, and I've been arguing with the useless CSRs for over a year now.

The old mobile cartel in France used to have the best speeds but now they are more interested in paying their investors instead of delivering what their clients have paid for.

Another downside is that Free has been pushing for tiered internet access where you have to pay extra to access a specific website like Youtube. And most people like their low cost so much that they don't even care if it means the end of a free and open Internet.

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