The revolution is on the way... for our purses

Am I the only one to be frustrated every month when I receive my mobile phone bill? I’m not sure about that. For years, mobile network operators have become rich making us pay astronomical amounts for our plans. Recently in France, Bouygues Telecom, SFR and Orange have been charged with an illicit informal agreement between them and have been found guilty for this. For that reason they were fined a record amount. With this informal agreement, Mobile network operators agreed on the rates they offered to avoid competitiveness and drop in prices.

However, a lot of things have changed since these days and for few years launching of virtual mobile network operators have made it evolve.

But the real and deep evolution has been coming with FREE, as it’s said in its catch-phrase, we can translate in English by “The revolution is on the way”. In a first time, they have revolutionized our internet offer with the “all-included” for 30 euros and now they’ve been making a start on mobile network and this is a really good thing for customers because FREE slashes prices. Xavier Niel, Free’s CEO, has been talking about it for about a year now and he said in several newspapers that competition is important and customers too and this is the reason why he has decided to conquer the mobile network market in France. 

The world of telecommunications is holding its breath waiting for the launching of Free Mobile. There is a lot of mystery around the offer of the new mobile network operator. Every day there is a new rumour about the prices, the offer or the release date. Xavier Niel plays with that situation, frightening competitors. He said recently, that the offer of Free is going to be much lower than competitor’s and that he doesn’t understand why they don’t do anything to be sure not losing customers. What surprises me the most was a sentence by the CEO. He said something like: if I drop the amount by a half the company will still make a profit and a sufficient profit margin. That’s totally incredible because it means that until today operators like SFR or Orange make big profit, more than enough… but nothing is enough with capitalism.

I think the important thing to notice here, apart the benefit for customers, is the real willing for Free and its mother company Illiad to establish itself in France, creating new jobs. While companies like SFR has been relocating their call centers in North African Countries, Free has been creating a thousand jobs in the Paris suburbs. This company is a real model of social responsibility.

Sarah Bencheikh