Free Mobile activates 4M hotspots

France's Free Mobile launched with enormous hoopla in January, offering dirt-cheap mobile voice and data plans that far undercut its competitors, however it sat on a key component of its innovative mobile strategy until today. On Thursday, Free's parent Iliad announced that it has opened up its 4 million-hotspot community Wi-Fi network to its smartphone clients, creating the world’s largest carrier-run mobile data offload network.

The Wi-Fi hotspots aren't the usual access points you find in coffee shops and airport terminals. In other words, they're embedded in the Freebox Internet gateways of its DSL and fiber-to-the-home clients throughout France. The network has been around since 2009, when clients first began agreeing to share part of their broadband access with other Iliad clients. However until now, Free's new and fast-growing base of smartphone customers hasn't been able to tap into that huge resource - meanwhile not automatically.

Free Mobile clients with one of its standard plans, will now be able to configure their phones to automatically connect to any Wi-Fi hotspot in the Freebox community, gaining unlimited data access and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calling. Or rather than forcing clients to locate SSIDs and enter passwords, the device's SIM card automatically authenticates and links to the network. No word but on whether Iliad will extend hotspot access to its lower-tier plans, which scale all the way down €2 a month, nevertheless you would think opening up the network to all clients has to be in Free's roadmap.

By leaning heavily on Wi-Fi, Free can offload enormous amounts of traffic that would for the most part traverse HSPA+ networks, where capacity is scarce and bandwidth expensive to deliver. To tell the truth, Free has probably been taking it in the teeth for the last three months, since its new data-hungry subscribers have all been relying primarily on 3G for access. Free's HSPA+ footprint is after all limited so it's had to lean heavily on the networks of its wholesale mobile provider Orange. During Free has placed a 3 GB cap on 3G data, it must have racked up some huge data bills in the last few months.

The Wi-Fi network active for mobile

With the Wi-Fi network active for mobile, Free can relieve those 3G networks of much of their data burden. Clearly, the strategy only works if clients are in range of a Freebox hotspot, which means Wi-Fi's primary beneficiaries will be in urban areas. Nevertheless urban areas are as well precisely where the greatest demand for mobile broadband exists. And 4 million hotspots provide a lot of extra capacity.

They are, or meanwhile they’re trying. I just don’t think they can ever replicate the huge Wi-Fi network Iliad has. The weird thing is Comcast and the other MSOs would have been perfectly positioned to try something like this, nevertheless they’re selling their 4G spectrum.