Tag: n-play communications service

Articles – French language / Langue Française 

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.

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.

Articles and Resources (French language)

La Livebox Play entre en scène – Tour d’horizon de l’offre Livebox Play – DegroupNews.com (Review)

La Box by Numericable (Interactive Advertisement by Numericable)

My comments

After the Freebox Révolution had appeared on the French market as a highly-credible piece of carrier-provided consumer equipment provided as part of a triple-play service, the bar had been raised for such equipment.

For example, the décodeurs i.e. the set-top boxes had become fully-capable video peripherals that integrate a slot-load Blu-Ray 3D player and provide the existing TV set with full smart-TV abilities. This even includes games-console functionality with access to a carrier-hosted app store for these games. Some of the remote controls that come with the set-top equipment have “out-of-the-ordinary” control methods like gesture-based control and RF controller-STB link, with some offering the HDMI-Consumer-Electronics-Control functionality so you can control your flatscreen TV’s source-selection, volume and power wit these remotes.

As well, the n-boxes i.e. the gateway devices are equipped with a network-attached storage based around an integrated hard disk. These would work to the common file-presentation protocols like SMB/CIFS, FTP, HTTP, iTunes (DAAP) and DLNA while offering functionality that a mid-tier consumer NAS would offer like a download manager / torrent server. Even the way the carriers have the gateway devices styled carries the message that they don’t look like your father’s old station wagon.

I have previously covered on HomeNetworking01.info the ability for French-market Samsung Smart TVs to work with Le Modem  which is part of Orange’s LiveBox Play package.

Numericable’s La Box package is an all-in-one device which connects to their FTTN / DOCSIS cable-modem service. But this device has the cable modem, router, VoIP gateway, NAS, PVR and Blu-Ray functionality in the one box. This setup even uses the QR codes as one of its methods for securely enrolling smartphones and tablets to the Wi-Fi wireless network segment.

The LiveBox Play gateway device, henceforth known as Le Modem, implements things like an OLED customer-information display and uses 3 WAN options – VDSL2, ADSL2 and fibre-to-the-premises.

There are others like the Bbox Sensation which also are equipped with the similar functionality but it would be interesting to see who else would run with similar hardware that has this high level of functionality or raise the stakes further through the firmware update cycles.

Similarly it would be interesting to see whether these devices just appear within France or appear in other markets where there is real competition on the Internet-service front.