“Like something never seen before”? The pitch at the Free press conference, this Tuesday, January 30, had an exciting side. Expected but not spoiled on the networks (even if Free had teased some close-ups of a mysterious product), the Freebox V9 was among the hopes of many subscribers, some of whom were perhaps disappointed by the Delta, with mixed success. This V9 will ultimately be called Ultra. 20 minutes reveals the outlines of this new offer.
Internet boosted like never before
The new generation of Freebox wants to play the performance card. Announced with upstream and downstream speeds of up to 8 Gb/s, the box with rounded curves is also distinguished by the integration of Wifi 7, the new standard up to five times faster than Wifi 6. Wifi 7 uses the 6 Hz frequency band, which is not very busy and therefore extremely fast. The box is also offered with a Wifi 7 repeater, the first on the market. Symmetrical fiber at 10 Gb/s, Wifi 7: this is a first!
Xavier Niel, the boss of Free, did not fail to attack his competitors who, in 2018, argued that the 10 Gb/s/s internet did not have a use case for individuals. In addition to the Freebox Ultra, a small 4G box called Pocket Wi-fi will allow you to have your own Wi-Fi network on the move (with 200 GB of data before activation online, then 50 GB per month).
On the connectivity side, the Freebox Ultra integrates four Ethernet ports, a USB 3.0 port and a slot to put an NVMe disk (for new generation flash and SSD disks and to act as a NAS server).
Always more services
But where Free also wishes to mark its difference with Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, it is in the content offer, those which are natively included in its box. In addition to the 280 channels offered natively, in addition to Free League 1, Netflix, Amazon Prime (with its express delivery service), in addition to the OQEE VOD platform and its 500 free films, Free is expanding its offering with Disney+, Universal + but also Canal+ Live . Xavier Neil has done the math: there is 84 euros worth of content in the box, where competitors offer it for at most 58 euros.
“It’s a sick offer, unheard of. We have always been there to lower prices in this country,” enthused Xavier Niel. So is the Freebox Ultra also exciting? We couldn’t say less, since Free is offering it today at the price of 49.99 euros for 12 months (then 59.99 euros), without commitment. Named Ultra Essential, a light version of the Freebox Ultra is also offered (with an offer of limited content) for 39.99 euros/month for 12 months, then at 49.99 euros.