French ISP Free just released a symmetrical 8Gbits option for 50€ a month

[Antares23]

Hi,

I guess this is a mainly English forum, but I think this might be worth talking about.
Free, a French ISP just announced their new Freebox Ultra, a 50€ a month (for a year, then 60€) option with the following:

The router part:
Qualcomm Networking Pro 820 chip
8Gbit/s up - 8Gbit/s down
2 SFP 10G ports (One in for plugging in the Fiber connexion from the wall, and the other for using it with a Switch or another router)
4 2.5G Ethernet ports
WiFi 7 MU-MIMO Quad Band (2.4GHz 2x2 + 5GHz down 2x2 + 5GHz up 2x2 + 6GHz 2x2
NVMe 2280 Gen 3 slot in the router to be used as a NAS

USB-C power connector

Including WiFi 7 mesh repeater

And the TV part, a 4K player:
280 TV channel including Canal (basically French cable TV)
Every match of the League 1 Uber Eats
Oqee Ciné (500 movies and TV shows)
Cafeyn
Netflix (Standard option with ads, if you want to upgrade to a higher tier, you just pay the difference)
Amazon Prime (Prime, Prime Video, Prime Music and Prime Gaming)
Disney+  (Standard option with ads, if you want to upgrade to a higher tier, you just pay the difference)
Universal+

+ Pocket WiFi hotspot access point

All of that for 50 bucks a month, and you can also get up to 4 unlimited mobile plan for 9€ a month (really unlimited, not capped, one of my friend already downloaded 2TB in a month with his unlimited Free Mobile plan, the speed didn't slowed down and he did not get charged for what he used beside the 9 bucks a month)

They talked about all the service they included, it cost 84€ a month + about 58€ a month for equivalent Fiber option by the competition, so 142€/month, but you get all of that for 50€/month.

And you can also get the Essential version without all the streaming option for 40€/month.
The only option in the world that offer symmetrical 8Gbit/s up/8Gbit/s down is Google Fiber in the US for 150$ a month in selected areas.

I have to say that I'm kinda blown away. I wonder how they managed to even be sustainable, but since they're there since the beginning of the 2000 I guess they are.

Internet service provider might not be the most exciting thing to talk about, but for those who can understand French, or be okay with the approximate automatic English translation, look at their keynote.

[Shimejii]

Pretty insane for that o.o Its like 200$ here for something like that. Not that it would help since most downloads are gonna be limited to 1-2.5 gigabit.

[Antares23]

12 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

Pretty insane for that o.o Its like 200$ here for something like that. Not that it would help since most downloads are gonna be limited to 1-2.5 gigabit.

Yeah, really insane. I have a 1Gbit/s down, 700Mbit/s up for 40€, I think I'll switch to that new Freebox pretty soon. That seems like a really good deal.

Yeah if you are living alone, or only using one computer at a time sure, but once you share the connection with multiple people or using multiple computer/device at a time or else, then it starts to be interesting.

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, Antares23 said:

8Gbit/s up - 8Gbit/s down

I think AT&T was looking to offer something like that here in the US. Not sure if they did. Im pretty sure they launched the 5 Gig service. Granted not as cheap as this ISP is offering, definitely was over $100 USD. Comcast my ISP will provide 10 Gig I think, but you have to be with in 1/3 mile of their Fiber network, pay up to $1000 for install and activation, pay $299 a month and have a 3 year contract. Otherwise you mainly get stuck with coax based internet which we pay $96 a month for 400/10 with a 1.2 TB data cap, overage charges if we go over.

[Lurick]

9 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I think AT&T was looking to offer something like that here in the US. Not sure if they did. Im pretty sure they launched the 5 Gig service. Granted not as cheap as this ISP is offering, definitely was over $100 USD. Comcast my ISP will provide 10 Gig I think, but you have to be with in 1/3 mile of their Fiber network, pay up to $1000 for install and activation, pay $299 a month and have a 3 year contract. Otherwise you mainly get stuck with coax based internet which we pay $96 a month for 400/10 with a 1.2 TB data cap, overage charges if we go over.

Right now AT&T's 5gig service is $250/month, it used to be $180 and they recently raised the prices by a lot. They were planning to do 8g or 10g but I shudder to think of how much they'd charge for that now.