SAS | |
Industry | Telecommunications |
Founded | 1999 |
Founder | Xavier Niel |
Headquarters | Paris, France |
Area served
|
France |
Key people
|
Xavier Niel, Maxime Lombardini, Rani Assaf, Antoine Levavasseur, Thomas Reynaud |
Products |
Freebox, Freebox TV, Freestore |
Services |
Fixed-line internet services, IP television, fixed-line and mobile telephony, Quadruple play, Network services
|
Owner | Iliad |
Number of employees
|
5 665 |
Divisions |
Freebox Free Mobile Free Infrastructure |
Subsidiaries |
Alice ADSL |
Website | free.fr |
Freebox, Freebox TV, Freestore
Fixed-line internet services, IP television, fixed-line and mobile telephony, Quadruple play, Network services
Free is a French telecommunications company, subsidiary of Iliad that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications to consumers in France. Its head office is in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.
Free provides ISP services in France and in the 30 OECD countries. It was the first company to offer a "triple play" service in France through its self-produced singular Freebox set-top box, claiming to have invented the box marketing concept in France in reference to all the other French ISPs who thereafter released "triple play" modems named to include the anglicism box as a suffix. These boxes provide comprehensive telecommunication services such as high-speed internet, and digital television packages, leading Free to become the world's number one IPTV provider offering almost systematically IPTV to subscribers and optimising it to be available on most landlines.
Developing its own 3G and 4G networks, Free Mobile was launched in 2012 and became the 4th mobile network operator in France.
Free was the third ISP in France to offer Internet access without a subscription or a surcharged phone number, on 26 April 1999. Unlike its predecessors in the niche of access without subscription (World Online on 1999-04-01 and Freesurf on 1999-04-19), Free's offer was not restricted in time or number of subscribers.