Tag: France

Freebox Ultra now the technical hallmark for home broadband routers

Article

Freebox Ultra router and extender press image courtesy of Iliad Free

Freebox Ultra Wi-Fi 7 router being defined as the cutting-edge for carrier-supplied customer-premises equipment for home networks

The Freebox Ultra’s First Test: Wi-Fi 7 Surpasses Expectations – GAMINGDEPUTY

French language / Langue française

Freebox Ultra : pourquoi elle est devenue rapidement une référence technique | Freenews.fr

Test de la Freebox Ultra : notre avis complet sur la box Internet de Free (frandroid.com)

My Comments

The competitive telecommunications and Internet market in France has led towards some exciting equipment being offered has led to the local telecommunications providers offering customer premises equipment way above the average for this class of equipment.

One firm I have given space to a lot on this site is Iliad who run their “Free” Internet service in France as something that raised the bar for value there. They ended up offering a highly capable piece of equipment in the form of the Freebox Révolution with a highly-capable router / NAS unit / DECT cordless-telephone base station in one Phillippe-Starck-designed box and a “décodeur” set-top box with Blu-Ray player in another similarly-designed box. It even ended up with features like “box-to-box” or “client-to-box” VPN support, software-defined Wi-Fi 5 support and a gyroscopic remote control and both devices benefited from continual firmware upgrades that offered new functionality.

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

Previously, the Freebox Révolution was defined as the cutting edge for this class of hardware

Now Iliad have taken things further with the Freebox Ultra which is usurping the role of the Freebox Révolution. This, like the Freebox Révolution uses fibre optic as the WAN connection but can work at 10 Gigabit speed, allowing for a competitive 10G Internet service courtesy of Free.

There is an extraordinary local network offering with a Wi-Fi 7 4-band access point with two streams for all of the bands. This media network is protected using the latest WPA3 security specification and there is the ability to steer client devices to the best band to work with. As for the wired network, this Freebox is about multi-gigabit Ethernet all the way with a 10 Gigabit SFP connection and four 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet sockets as a switch.

The CPU in this Freebox Ultra is an ARM Cortex A73 RISC CPU, something that wouldn’t look out of place in smartphones, tablets or the connected car. Here it is about using less power to handle a lot of data and offer a rich user interface. A user can install a NVM3 2280 SSD stick in to this router to have this work as a NAS the Freebox way with support for UPnP AV / DLNA, Apple Time Machine and other common standards. The other approach for connecting storage to this device is to use a USB-C socket with 60W PowerDelivery power for a USB hard disk or SSD of some sort.

Like the recent Freebox setups since the Révolution, this unit works on the Freebox OS which has a user interface that wouldn’t look out of place on a recent consumer or small-business network-attached storage device  or a desktop operating system’s GUI. Here, I wouldn’t put it past Free to add more functionality with a Freebox OS firmware update, even have it work with newer Wi-Fi or other network standards.

This device even comes with an extender known as the Freebox Répéteur 7 which works on Wi-Fi 7 to cover larger French homes like the “mas en Provence” so you can have continual Wi-Fi coverage through them. There is even an Ethernet connection so you could connect a wired Ethernet device to the extender or, perhaps, run a wired backhaul to the Ereebox 7.

Due to this connectivity and these capabilities, it bas been realised that the Freebox Ultra is about achieving a future-proof home network for your French home. This device is typically offered for EUR€49.99 per month with a fibre-optic broadband service that offers Internet, TV and fixed-line telephony of the kind expected in a French competitive telecommunications market.

Once you have the French telecommunications providers and AVM continually offering cutting-edge consumer-premises network equipment, it wouldn’t take long for these firms to compete with Silicon Valley and become an “Airbus” or “Arianespace” equivalent.

Freebox routers to support WPA3 Wi-Fi security through a firmware update

Article – French language / Langue Française

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

A firmware update will give WPA3 Wi-Fi security to the Freebox Révolution and newer Freebox devices

Mise à jour du Freebox Server (Révolution/mini/One/Delta/Pop) 4.2.0 | Freebox.fr Blog

My Comments

Free.fr have pushed forward the idea of using a firmware update to deliver the WPA3 Wi-Fi network security standard to recent Freebox Server modem-routers that are part of their Freebox Internet service packages.

This is part of the FreeOS 4.2.0 major firmware update which also improves Wi-Fi network stability; implements QR-based device enrolment for the Wi-Fi network along with profile-driven parental control. It will apply to the Freebox Révolution which I see as the poster child of a highly-competitive French Internet service market and descendent devices like the mini, one, Delta and Pop.

The WPA3 functionality will be configured to work in WPA2+WPA3 compatibility mode to cater for extant WPA2 client devices that exist on the home network. This is because most home-network devices like printers or Internet radios won’t even have the ability to be updated to work with WPA3-secured networks.

At the moment, Free is rolling out updates to their mobile apps to support WPA3 on the mobile operating systems. It is most likely until Google, Apple and mobile-phone vendors offer WPA3 “out-of-the-box” with their smartphone and tablet platforms.

What I like of Free’s software-driven approach is that there is no need to replace the modem-router to have your network implement WPA3 Wi-Fi network security. It is very similar to what AVM did to enable distributed Wi-Fi functionality in a significant number of their FritzBox routers and other devices in their existing home-network product range where this function was part of a firmware upgrade.

It is avoiding the need for customers to purchase new hardware if they need to move to WPA3 network security and I would see this as a significant trend regarding European-designed home-network hardware where newer network capabilities are just a firmware update away.

Bouygues Télécom to get rid of the set-top box through a Samsung smart-TV app

Articles – French language / Langue française Flag of France

Bouygues Telecom s’associe à Samsung pour faire disparaître les box TV | 01Net.com

Samsung et Bouygues Telecom s’associent pour faire disparaître le décodeur TV | ZDNet.fr

My Comments

The highly-competitive French Internet and telecommunications market is drawing out another key trend regarding provision of TV service. Nearly every French telco is offering a “décodeur” set-top-box along with their modem-router “box” that is above ordinary for this class of carrier-supplied equipment. It is typically part of the deal when a customer signs up for a single-pipe triple-play Internet service with these operators.

This led to some systems like the Freebox Révolution which demonstrated high “media-centre” capability and even the Freebox Delta being the basis of a France-owned French-speaking voice-driven home assistant platform. I have also seen this level of innovation raise the bar for European personal information/communication technology sector.

But Bouygues Télécom is heading towards the smart-TV approach through the use of their B.TV app that runs on compatible Samsung smart TVs. It is in lieu of a décodeur set-top box that normally is part of the deal for watching the TV channels provided as part of these services.

The single-pipe triple-play package is expected to cost EUR€39.99 per month over a 24-month contract and is available to areas that are served by Bouygues Télécom with fibre-to-the-premises technology. Bouygues Télécom are also offering a Samsung 4K UHDTV for people who are signing up to this deal. This is the Crystal 4K UHD model with a 43” variant for EUR€49, a 55” variant for EUR€199 or a 65” variant for EUR€349.

It is part of a trend affecting the highly-competitive French ISP market to telcos to have a “set-top-box as an app” using smart-TV platforms for their n-box triple-play service, with SFR also on the bandwagon. Here, this will offer the IP-delivered linear and on-demand TV content and a lean-back user interface for the TV service through the app.

Questions that will come up with this app-based approach include whether the app will be delivered to other mobile and connected-TV/set-top-box platforms; along with the availability of a set-top-box for people to use with existing TV sets. It is although these offers will be pitched towards the ownership of certain Samsung TVs but there is the reality of older TVs being pushed to secondary viewing areas. There will also be the issue of maintaining these apps even if the TV or set-top-box manufacturer declares end-of-support on their device.

B.TV is what I would see as part of a Europe-wide effort to provide “set-top-box-free” TV service for IP-based multichannel TV providers including telcos who are part of this game. This is to avoid the need to buy a huge quantity of hardware to get one of these services off the ground.

Germany to instigate the creation of a European public cloud service

Article

Map of Europe By User:mjchael by using preliminary work of maix¿? [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Europe to have one or more public cloud services that respect European sovereignty and values

Germany to Unveil European Cloud to Rival Amazon, Alibaba | ITPro Today

France, Germany want more homegrown clouds to pick from | ITNews (Premium)

My Comments

Germany is instigating a European-wide project to create a public cloud-computing service.  As well, France is registering intent in this same idea but of creating another of these services.

Both countries’ intention is to rival what USA and Asia are offering regarding public-cloud data-processing solutions. But, as I have said before, it is about having public data infrastructure that is sovereign to European laws and values. This also includes the management and dissemination of such data in a broad and secure manner.

Freebox Delta press photo courtesy of Iliad (Free.fr)

… which could also facilitate European software and data services like what is offered through the Freebox Delta

The issue of data sovereignty has become of concern in Europe due to the USA and China pushing legislation to enable their governments to gain access to data held by data service providers that are based in those countries. This is even if the data is held on behalf of a third-party company or hosted on servers that are installed in other countries. The situation has been underscored by a variety of geopolitical tensions involving especially those countries such as the recent USA-China trade spat.

It is also driven by some European countries being dissatisfied with Silicon Valley’s dominance in the world of “as-a-service” computing. This is more so with France where there are goals to detach from and tax “GAFA” (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) due to their inordinate influence in consumer and business computing worlds.

or BMW’s voice-driven assistant for in-car infotainment

Let’s not forget that Qarnot in France has designed computers that put their waste heat to use for heating rooms or creating hot water in buildings. This will appeal to a widely-distributed data-processing setup that could be part of public cloud-computing efforts.

Questions that will crop up with the Brexit agenda when Europe establishes this public cloud service will include British data sovereignty if data is held on the European public cloud or whether Britain will have any access or input into this public cloud.

Airbus A380 superjumbo jet wet-leased by HiFly at Paris Air Show press picture courtesy of Airbus

… just like this Airbus A380 superjumbo jet shows European prowess in aerospace

Personally I could see this as facilitating the wider creation of online services by European companies especially with the view to respecting European personal and business values. It could encompass ideas like voice-driven assistant services, search engines, mapping and similar services for consumers or to encourage European IT development.

Could this effort that Germany and France put forward be the Airbus or Arianespace of public-cloud data services?

The successor to the Freebox Révolution has arrived in France

Articles Freebox Delta press photo courtesy of Iliad (Free.fr)

Xavier Niel unveils new Freebox with Alexa, Devialet, Sigfox, Netflix | TechCrunch

French Language / Langue française

Free annonce ses nouvelles Freebox : la Freebox Delta et la Freebox One | FreeNews

Freebox One : pour les accros à Netflix (et c’est tout) | ZDNet.fr

Freebox Delta : voici la box qui doit sauver Free | ZDNet.fr

From the horse’s mouth

Free.fr (French Language / Langue française)

Freebox Delta (Press Release / Communiqué de presse – PDF)

Freebox One (Press Release / Communiqué de presse – PDF)

My Comments

While the “gilets jaunes” were protesting about the cost of living in France, Free.fr had just launched a long-awaited successor to the Freebox Révolution modem-router and media player setup.

The Freebox Révolution was a device symbolic of the highly-competitive telecommunications and Internet-service market that exists in France. It is a xDSL modem-router with an Ethernet connection and a NAS that is also a DLNA-compliant media server. It works with a set-top media player that has an integrated PVR and Blu-Ray player. But over the years, these units took on new functionality that was extraordinary for carrier-provided equipment such as VPN endpoint and Apple AirPlay functionality. Infact I saw it as a benchmark for devices supplied by telcos and ISPs for Internet access when it came to functionality.

Here, there are two systems – one called the Freebox Delta which is positioned at the premium end of the market, and the other called the Freebox One which is positioned as an entry-level offering.

The Freebox Delta has a server unit which combines a modem-router and a NAS that is equivalent to a baseline 4-bay standalone NAS. The WAN (Internet) side can work with a 10Gb fibre connection, an xDSL connection or a 4G mobile broadband connection. But it is the first modem-router that can aggregate the bandwidth of an xDSL connection and a 4G mobile broadband connection for increased throughput.

On the LAN side, there is a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) connection working across three bands and implementing MU-MIMO wireless connectivity. It is in conjunction with an integral four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch. There is the ability to link to the Freebox Delta Player in another room using the FreePlugs which are Gigabit HomePlug AV2 adaptors that Free.fr provides but these are actually network adaptors that use the USB-C peripheral connection approach.

The VoIP functionality that any “box” service offered by the French carriers provides has an RJ11 endpoint for a telephone as well as a DECT base station. There is a USB-C connection along with NFC support.

But Free.fr are even having the Freebox Delta as part of a home-automation system by providing hardware and software support for home-automation hub functionality. It is thanks to Free’s partnership with the Sigfox smart-home software platform. This is based around Zigbee technology with Free.fr and others supplying “smart-home” devices complying with this technology.

The Freebox Delta Player is effectively a connected speaker made by Devialet, a French hi-fi name of respect when it comes to speaker.  But it is a soundbar that uses 6 drivers to yield effectively a 5.1 surround-sound experience.

It works with a French-based voice-driven home assistant (OK Freebox) that handles basic commands but can work with Amazon Alexa which gives it access to the Amazon Alexa Skills library. This is achieved through a four-microphone array and is another way for a European company to effectively answer Silicon Valley in the field of voice-driven assistant platforms.

It can yield pictures to the 4K HDR 10 standard using an HDMI 2.1 socket compliant with the HDCP 2.2 standard and supporting eARC audio transfer that allows for best use with 4K UHD TVs. There is also a DVB-T2 tuner for over-the-air digital TV. You can control the Freebox Delta Player using a wirelessly-charged touchscreen remote which charges on a Qi-compliant wireless charging plate integrated in this media player. Let’s not forget that this device is up-to-date by implementing USB-C peripheral connectivity for two peripherals.

The Freebox Delta will cost EUR€480 to buy, with payment options of  EUR€120 per month over 4 months, EUR€10 per month over 48 months or the full upfront price being paid. The service will cost at least EUR€49.99 per month.

Freebox One press picture courtesy of Iliad (Free.fr)

Freebox One – the entry-level solution

The Freebox One is an entry level single-piece multimedia player and modem-router unit. This will have a Gigabit Fibre and xDSL connectivity on the WAN (Internet) side and Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and four Gigabit Ethernet ports on the LAN side. There will be the DECT VoIP base for the telephony function along with a DVB-T connection for digital TV. It can work with 4K HDR 10 via an HDMI 2.1 (HDCP 2.2 compliant) port for your 4K UHDTV.

It has a front-panel display that is similar to the previous generation of Freebox systems.  You can get this device for EUR€29.99 per month for first year, EUR€39.99 per month as a Freebox hardware-and-services package of the kind you get in France.

With both Freebox systems, I would expect that Free.fr will regularly release new firmware that will add extra functionality to these devices over the years. When you get these “boxes”, you will find that there is more of an incentive to visit the “mis à jour” part of the user interface and frequently update their software.

By offering the Freebox Delta for sale rather tied with a multiple-play service package, Free.fr wants to be able to sell this unit as a device you can use with other services. This means that they can put themselves on the same footing as AVM by being another Continental-European source of highly-capable always-updated consumer premises equipment for your home network.

But what needs to happen is for the European consumer IT firms to create hardware and software platforms that can effectively answer what Silicon Valley has to offer. Who knows which European companies will end up as the “Airbus” or “Arianespace” of consumer and small-business IT?

France takes steps towards a YouTube competitor

Articles – French language / Langue Française

Map of France

France sowing the seeds for a YouTube competitor

Nouveau monde. Un YouTube “libre” à la française | France TV

From the horse’s mouth

Framatube.org

My Comments

I have previously raised the issue of people and companies based in Europe building online services that compete with what Silicon Valley offers but respect European values. This has been more so in respect to the European Commission taking legal action against the Silicon Valley IT titans like Google and Facebook due to issues like user privacy and respect for European values.

Subsequently, in answer to Google denying Amazon access to YouTube for their Echo Show product, I wrote an article about YouTube needing to face competition when it comes to online video services.

Here, I was calling out issues like individuals and small businesses needing affordable options for sharing their video content while they maintain effective control over it. It also includes issues like monetisation options for video content providers along with proper fair dealing for content creators and rightsholders when it comes to using copyrighted works in the content creators’ videos. The latter issue focuses on users using a relatively small part of a copyrighted work like a phrase from a song or a few seconds of vision from a film or TV show in an incidental manner.

Amazon Echo Spot press picture courtesy of Amazon

Could this be a chance to make user-generated video available on devices like Amazon’s Echo Spot?

In the same context, I was calling out the availability of native-client apps for various IT platforms, whether as a separately-installed app for a regular-computer or mobile operating system or as something baked in to firmware for a device like a set-top box or smart speaker. This is so you aren’t always heading down an inefficient path of using a browser to view videos or find that you can’t use the platform’s or device’s assets for this task.

The French have taken off with this goal with Framasoft, a French open-source software developer, working towards a peer-to-peer approach.

The “PeerTube” approach is based on free open-source software and implements a “federation” model. This is where a host could store video uploaded to it directly but also share video uploaded to other hosts. This can please media companies, the education sector, Webhosts and other companies who have multiple servers or data centers in differing geographical locations and make sure these hosts serve viewers closer to them.

It is being driven by the “WebTorrent” concept of integrating BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing technology to video streaming in an effort to reduce latency. Again, it is implementing free open-source technology to achieve the same goal.

At the moment, the “PeerTube” effort is at an alpha stage but there is a goal to have it to beta by March 2018. Framasoft are raising money to get this idea off the ground and have raised EUR€16,032 at the time of writing. There is also the issue of creating a Web-based portal to show what’s available along with providing source code to make native clients for a PeerTube content delivery network.

Personally, I would see the “PeerTube” concept working tightly with Webhosts, content delivery networks and the like to make audio and video distribution affordable for the small-timer. There will also be their idea of data centers including edge computing being used as a way to expedite reliable access to “catch-up TV” and similar video content pools.

What needs to happen once PeerTube is proven is that it needs to be sold as a viable alternative for YouTube when it comes to offering user-generated video content.

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)

Product Page

My Comments

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?

ARCEP is heading towards an IPv6 France

Article – French language / Langue Française

L’ARCEP propose un plan d’action pour migrer vers l’IPv6 | Freenews.fr

My Comments

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

The Freebox Révolution – the sign of an advanced Internet in France

France is intending to take bigger strides towards an IPv6 Internet.

Here, the ARCEP who is the country’s telecoms authority are expediting this process through a series of steps.

Firstly, they will be moving the government’s public-facing Web sites towards IPv6 operation. Most likely, this will be a dual-stack affair to allow legacy networks to touch these sites.

Then they will run a public-awareness and education campaign about IPv6 including identifying obstacles associated with not moving towards this newer set of Internet protocols. Two main obstacles in this case would be computers running operating systems that don’t have IPv6 dual-stack operation, and routers that don’t provide for IPv6 operation. This may not be an issue with the latest “n-boxes” that each of the French ISPs are offering to their customers like the Freebox Révolution.

IPv6 logo courtesy of World IPv6 Launch programThe next stage would be to facilitate moving towards IPv6 by having it work across all of the providers competing with each other in that country.

Users will also benefit from improved information especially about maintaining the IPv4 equipment and networks. This is more so with maintaining the legacy IPv4 addresses, but the endpoint issue could be resolved with various routing or tunnelling setups that IPv6 offers.

Last but not least, the French Internet backbone will move off IPv4 towards IPv6, probably only allowing IPv4 “at the edge”.

But some, if not most, of the ISPs serving the French market, especially Free, may be stepping forward towards IPv6 as part of the competitive marketplace. This includes releasing “n-box” routers that have support for this technology or adding this level of support to some existing equipment through a firmware update. Let’s not forget that most operating systems for regular and mobile computing devices will provide for IPv6 in a dual-stack form. Here, it is underscoring that France has been identified one of the first countries to head towards IPv6 technology.

Raising the bar for triple-play Internet in France

Articles – French language / Langue Française Flag of France

SFR lancera une nouvelle box en septembre… pour contrer Free ? | O1net.com

SFR : une nouvelle box fibre pour septembre ? | ZDNet.fr

SFR annonce une nouvelle box ! | Ere Numérique

From the horse’s mouth

SFR

Product Page (French language / Langue Française)

My Comments

It looks like there will be a tight showdown between two of the French telcos when it comes to the multiple-play “n-box” services.

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

The Freebox Révolution to be replaced with better-performing equipment soon

Free.fr did a bit of initial murmuring this month (July) about the Freebox v7 that will be surfacing on the French market in September. This is a powerful unit that can handle 4K UHDTV and is intended to replace the Freebox Révolution which was known to set the standard for carrier-supplied routers and set-top boxes.

Now SFR have made mention about a triple-play “n-box” service with hardware that is said to be on a par with, if not better than, Free’s setup. Here, this will be about improved Wi-Fi technology of the 802.11ac order, a new design and, like the Freebox, support for 4K UHDTV. This is in conjunction with more sports content and VoD content being made available to their subscriber base on 4K UHDTV.

It will be released in September, concurrently to when Free will put their new Freebox on the market. SFR want to also allow their existing subscriber base to upgrade to this new service for EUR€49 with a 12 month contract.

In the UK, British Telecom had raised the bar for Wi-Fi performance offered by a carrier-supplied wireless modem router. Could this also mean that the French telcos could join in and offer highly-powerful carrier-supplied wireless modem routers for their services as a way to compete against each other.

What is now happening is that the calibre offered for carrier-supplied home-network equipment could be another way where telcos and ISPs in a highly-competitive market could compete against each other. This is in addition to what you could get for your landline or mobile telephony service, your pay-TV service’s channel lineup or your Internet bandwidth and included services for the monthly charge that you stump up.

4K on carrier-provided IPTV–Free takes the first step

Articles – French language / Langue française

Freebox Mini press image courtesy of Free.fr

Freebox Mini 4K – gateway to 4K UHDTV in France

Free, 1er à proposer une chaîne 4K avec Festival 4K | Freenews.fr

Festival 4K disponible aussi en ADSL et VDSL sur Freebox | Freenews.fr

Ultra haute définition : Free diffuse la première chaîne 4K | ZDNet.fr

From the horse’s mouth

Free.fr

Press Release (PDF)

My Comments

Free.fr, who is a strong player in French multi-play Internet market has become the first multi-play ISP to offer a 4K UHDTV channel as part of their IPTV content.

The channel, called Festival 4K and found on logical channel number 62, is focused on musical theatre, concerts and similar cultural events with these events being transmitted using 4K UHDTV technology.  This will require the 4K UHDTV to be connected to the Freebox Mini 4K set-top box which is based on Android TV software.

The initial subscription technical requirement was for the household to be connected to Free’s services via fibre-to-the-premises technology. But later on, it was discovered that you can use a VDSL2 or ADSL2 connection “dégroupée” (unbundled local loop) to Free and the connection has to have at least 15Mbps for reliable operationj.

This is another step with Free to lead the pack when it comes to competitive multiple-play services by opening up towards cutting-edge technology in the form of 4K UHDTV broadcasting.