Talk:France/@comment-24682153-20160201192502

Hi from the Admin. I constantly have to undo a bias towards Free edited by an anonymous user. Free is mentioned here under very special circumstances as well with their postpaid product. This is the utmost exception I'm willing to make. But this add-on, I simply can't:

''Free Mobile owns a 15 Mhz band of 2600 MHz spectrum, allowing a theoretical 4G speed of 150 Mbps with compatible devices (LTE cat4), on which download speeds of 140+ Mbps were reported. They are also entitled with a 15 Mhz band of 1800 MHz spectrum, and 10 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum, but these bands will available to use starting on April 2016 as per the licenses terms. When enabled, this will significantly increase the network performance (both speed and coverage).''

Reasons:

1.) we don't give future possible coverages and speeds anywhere. It's OK to name frequency bands for future employment in the Basics, but nobody has any news from theoretical speeds and prospective coverages. When a certain coverage by LTE is achieved, the 60% number given by Arcep (the French regulator) can be adjusted.

2.) everybody builds up LTE. Why should we mention only Free for building up?

3.) the 700 MHz frequency was awarded by ACEP to all 4 operators, It's not special to Free. The coverage of all operators will be expanded by this band.

4.) Why are only good numbers concerning Free are given? Their 3G coverage is much lower: 5159 base stations vs. 18654 of e.g. Orange. Free users are on average 1/3 of their time roaming on Orange.

So please understand: If we tell this about Free, we'll have to be fair and tell this about Orange, SFR and Bouygues too.