Xavier Niel’s free.fr is the reason why access is cheaper and faster in France

Om Malik of GigaOm just posted report on his meeting with Mr Neil during his recent trip to Paris. Neil’s company and the state of broadband in France clearly demonstrates why the duopoly in the US has labored so hard to keep line sharing or local loop unbundling out of the marketplace.

On free.fr from GigaOm:

it has taken the French telecom market by the scruff and given it a vigorous shake.

How? By offering a flat-rate, high-speed Internet connection for 30 euros ($43) a month. That gives Free.fr’s three million subscribers a connection speed of roughly 28 megabits per second over DSL, free IPTV (and a free set-top box), a free Wi-Fi hub, and unlimited voice calls to some 70 countries.

Perplexed by the panoply of features offered by his service, I asked Niel how Free.fr does it. “We are a broadband service provider,” was his matter-of-fact reply. “Everything else — from voice to IPTV to storage – is just a feature that rides on this data service.” For the rest of the telecom industry, long addicted to metered minutes and billable items, this is rebellious thinking.

The rest of the report is highly recommended reading, especially for those who are not yet convinced that real competition will cure most of the ills currently associated with access providers.