Niel defends Free Mobile at National Assembly

Xavier Niel, founder of French operator Free Mobile's parent company Iliad, has defended the new mobile operator and its business model before the National Assembly's economic affairs committee. Responding to criticisms that Free Mobile had switched off base stations and was too reliant on its roaming agreement with Orange, Niel said that telecom regulator Arcep determined that Free Mobile had achieved over 27 percent population coverage and the operator was continuing to add base stations. Les Echos reports that he told the deputies that the network roaming model was not viable in the long term and that Free Mobile needs to reach 90 percent coverage to make money. The company ordered over 5,000 base stations and already has 1,000 in operation. He recognised that there were still too few antennas in central Paris, due to the long process. However, thanks to agreements with mast operator TDF and large property companies, it is adding base stations without difficulties. He defended the operator's choice of limiting its launch pricing to the first 3 million subscribers, saying that after then, its offers could change and there were interesting possibilities for the EUR 2 a month subscription. Niel also recognised that Free Mobile was overwhelmed by its own success on the first day, with up to 4 million requests for information and no way for new customers to sign up, but that it was working without any problem only 24 hours later. He added that Free had opened four stores to date, will add a very large branch in Paris by the middle of the year, and planned eventually to have 100 stores.