Strategy Analytics: Free Threatens Mobile Free-for-All in French 3G Auction

BOSTON--The Strategy Analytics Wireless Network Strategies Report, “4th French 3G License: Can Free Make It a Free-For-All?” favorably assesses ISP Free’s bid to capitalize on a new 3G mobile license in France.

Maverick Free has crept up on the incumbent operators, Orange, SFR and Bouygues, to become the French market’s second largest ISP and wireline operator. Free has done so through leadership in pricing and technological innovation. Their arrival in the mobile market should cause concern to the incumbents.

Author Dominique Roussel, Vice-President of European Consulting for Strategy Analytics, comments, “After years of fairly insipid competition, the chickens may finally be coming home to roost in the French mobile market. Even if Free is unsuccessful, there is no question that they will shake up the market.”

Philip Kendall, Director, Wireless Network Strategies, adds, “If I were Free’s parent company, Iliad, I might wonder whether spending 15 billion Euros to buy Bouygues might not be a better strategy than spending 1.5 billion Euros to build an empty network.”

“Most price-based MVNOs have failed, but being an operator with a license makes the proposition potentially viable. Free would do well to study low ARPU but high EBITDA operators like Reliance, Bharti in India for example or some of Telenor’s operations,” says David Kerr, Senior Vice-President of the Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice.

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