Doug Mohney has posted about France Telecom’s move to make the entire country of France one giant calling area, and by doing so, has established flat rate calling all across the country. i’m calling this the result of the Vonage effect, but in reality it’s a way to get calls back off of the mobile phone networks, and remind consumers that a landline still has some value, and can save them money. It’s also easy for a telephone company to establish those types of rates, just as we’ve seen in the USA for some time but to a far greater extreme. Cable companies like Cablevision, Cox and Comcast have been offering unlimited calling, anywhere in the USA for some time, as has Vonage which started the free for all when they first launched. Rate centers have become meaningless here, and by going flat rate, France Telecom is pretty much conceding that too.
In our era of mobile and VoIP, landline minute plans get competitive with flat rate, as the cost for them has pretty much dropped to zero. By offering one flat rate all across the nation, FT says we can offer you a better deal to call Calais from Cannes. Next will likely come more bundle deals of landline and mobile, and eventually, one big barrel of minutes, landline, VoIP and mobile, all in one neat “sachet.”
France Telecom is playing catch-up to the triple-play services from other Service Providers. All their competitors ofter unlimited calling to fixed-lines any where in France, Europe, North America, and some other random parts of the world.
It is clear why FT is lower their PSTN pricing–still a ripoff.
All that FT has done is to eliminate national rates. Instead all calls are rated as local. Let’s not forget there are still call set-up fees associated with most calls. The estimated cost to FT is about €30m. Not a major impact on their bottom line. This change does not mean we are seeing flat rate calling in France.All we are seeing is a simplication of billing which allows FT to be more flexible in pricing and back-end processes.