The story
Founded by Xavier Niel on Apr 26, 1999.1
1999–2001
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.
In 2002, Free was the first Internet service provider (ISP) to provide a V.92 connection.
2002–2003: ADSL at a disruptive price
Since September 2002, Free contributed significantly to French ADSL boom. The offer was able to launch as soon as the incumbent was forced to stop abuse of dominant position and to apply fair wholesale prices.
2004–2006: Unbundled ADSL and "triple play"
Unbundling, in France, refers to the obligation for the incumbent carrier France Telecom to lease the local loop, because it is a natural monopoly. Although the unbundling process was intended to start by 2000, the actual unbundling process actually started at the end of 2002, after a long conflict between the French regulation authority ARCEP and the non-cooperative incumbent.
Free has to pay a rental fee of €9 per month and per subscriber to the incumbent for the twisted pair of copper between the area central office and the subscriber premises. Although more expensive than the real cost of €7.63, this solution is still far more profitable than the bundled option.
Since January 2003, a Freenaut has maintained an unofficial website, showing figures and graphics about Free unbundled network deployment (Free Unbundling). Another Freenaut website has provided network status monitoring maps Unbundling status and location since the end of 2003. These initiatives are made possible thanks to the transparency of Free's network: their equipment replies to ping and has a meaningful reverse DNS.
2007–present: Fiber to the home
On 11 November 2006, Free announced the deployment of a new fiber to the home (FTTH) network for its subscribers. The initial plan's goal is to cover Paris as well as some towns in the Paris suburbs and selected neighborhoods in other French cities by 2012. By December 2007, the work was 30% finished, and the remaining work was progressing "at a furious pace".
On 31 August 2007, Free updated the offer with more details. Download bandwidth shall be 100 Mbit/s and TV services shall be available for two televisions, at the same price of €29.99/month.
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Free has developed its own fiber network technology, called Iliad P2P, based on Ethernet in the first mile and having a point to point (P2P) topology. High curvature optic fibers are manufactured by the Dutch company Draka.
The deployment is still essentially in the horizontal phase (the vertical phase being connection to the subscriber premises), and large-scale deployment to customers is foreseen. On 26 June 2008, Maxime Lombardini and the mayor inaugurated Free's FTTH network in a district of Montpellier.
In March 2008, Iliad made the commitment to cover Paris at 75% by the second half of 2009, and reiterated its goal to connect 4 million French homes to its own FTTH network by 2012. Significant volumes of subscribers will be connected as soon as the legislative framework is in place, expected by ARCEP for autumn 2009.
From Wikipedia’s article on Free (ISP), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4