AOL France announced today it is introducing a very new aggressive pricing scheme:
- Access:
A 5Mb/s ADSL connection for 22,90€/month for the first 12 months (it goes up +5€/month afterwards). Depending on the quality of your phone line, and whether your zone allows local loop unbundling, you get 2, 3 of 5 Mb/s downwards, and 512K upwards. Other price schemes are available for lower speeds and zones not allowing unbundling.
There are no setup fees, but a cancel fee of 49€, although there is no minimum period anymore.
- Devices:
As soon as mid-august,AOL will offer the ADSL modem to its narrowband subscribers (at least 3 month old) moving to the new plan. Otherwise it'll cost 49,90€. It's a Thomson Speed Touch 570, available for 119€ in retail stores (shows up on kelkoo.co.uk for about £100). By the way this device is a Wi-Fi router, and AOL's account policy allows you to create up to 7 accounts with each subscription: very convenient for a family or SoHos.
- Software:
The solution comes bundled with AOL's latest software (AOL 9.0), including anti-spam tools, parental control, personal firewall, You've Got Pictures to store and exchange pictures, AOL journals - a personal blog, AOL mail, AOL content such as radio@aol and sessions@aol, AOL Instant Messenger, etc.
(via Comparatel)
It seems the ISP war in France has started: Free introduced a while ago its Freebox v3 with a Wi-Fi connector, although you have to buy the Wi-Fi card yourself for 27€. It also allows VoIP and TVoADSL, something AOL is not providing yet. Other players include Tiscali, N9uf Telecom, Alice, etc. grenouille.com lists them all.
Nevertheless AOL was selected as preferred ISP in France by l'Internaute magazine a couple of months ago.
Update on 10/8/04: Le JdN reports that indeed AOL is refocusing towards broadband customers: it has only 350K subscribers today, compared to Free's 700K subs. Although Free's offer is moer expensive at 29,90€/mo, it offers also TVoADSL and VoIP, which, according to the article, AOL doesn't have yet but is considering.
Which provider to you have ? and how much are you paying ?
I am still on a 512Kb/s with Noos at home, paying 39€/month. I had to call them 3 times to ask why I was paying more than their 2,5Mb/s offer on their website (did you know that if you are a member, you CANNOT access the product offer page from within their network ? shame on them).
Wanna bet I cancel my Internet subscription with Noos in the next few days and get a new one with someone else?
