Free (ISP)
Free S.A.S. is a French telecommunications company, subsidiary of Iliad S.A. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications to consumers in France. Its head office is in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and it is the second-largest ISP in France.
| Company type | S.A.S. |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 26 April 1999 |
| Founder | Xavier Niel |
| Headquarters | , France |
Area served | France |
Key people |
|
| Products | Freebox, Freebox TV |
| Services | Fixed-line Internet services, IP television, fixed-line and mobile telephony, quadruple play, network services
|
| Owner | Iliad (100%) |
Number of employees | 5665 |
| Parent | Iliad |
| Subsidiaries | Free Mobile (100%) Free Infrastructure (100%) |
| Website | www |
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, telephone and digital television packages, leading Free to become the world's number one IPTV provider offering almost systematically IPTV to subscribers and optimizing it to be available on most landlines.
Developing its own 3G and 4G networks, Free Mobile was launched in 2012 and became the fourth mobile network operator in France.