Orange offers a highly-capable Livebox next-generation triple-play package for 20 euros

Articles – French language / Langue Française

Orange : la Livebox fibre à moins de 20€ | Degroupnews.fr

From the horse’s mouth

Orange (France Télécom)

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The competitive French market has underscored another first with Orange (France Télécom) offering a baseline next-generation broadband triple-play service for EUR€20 per month. This is available to people who have Orange FTTP fibre-optic connectivity in their street or building.

Here, the baseline service has a symmetrical bandwidth of 100Mb/s, which may be considered a rarity for baseline Internet services offered by most telcos or Internet service providers. There is also included 10Gb of online storage, with the option to buy on 1Tb of “personal-cloud” NAS storage using the DLNA-capable Livebox Play modem router.

The fixed-line telephone service, which is VoIP-based, has all landline calls anywhere in France and its “Départements Outre-Mer” territories and 110 other countries including the commonly-called destinations included in the package. With this service, you can even call any mobile user in the US or Canada for as long as you like without paying extra. But Algeria and Tunisia are provided as “option-on” countries as far as this package is concerned.

The TV service includes 160 channels with 40 of these available in HD, and users can have multiple TV sets supported as an option. This is alongside the ability to option-on PVR-style recording.

But Orange are offering this service as a turnkey install for new subscribers with the ability to have 24-hour access to their support lines.

The device that is considered the bub of this service is the Livebox Play which supports VDSL2 or Gigabit Ethernet on the WAN (Internet) side and 802.11a/b/g/n dual-band WPA2 WPS Wi-Fi and a four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch on the LAN (home network) side.

The fixed-line telephony service is facilitated using a CAT-iQ base station for DECT or CAT-iQ compliant cordless handsets and a traditional analogue connection for regular telephones. You can also connect USB Mass-Storage devices to the Livebox Play in order to have their data on the home network.

What this package is highlighting is the benefit of sustainable competition on a market where there is an emphasis on value rather than a race to the bottom. It also includes the ability to target “sweet-spot” price points with service packages that have increased value and pitch these packages at users who see these price points as something they won’t go above. As well, the extant telco or ISP is forced to change its ways when it comes to providing a service like multi-play Internet service.

At the moment, the question to raise is whether France Télécom (Orange) will kill this deal after 16 November this year or simply let it roll on as the entry-level fibre-based triple-play package?

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