RE: UKNM: line one

[Tim Moore]

In a sage like manor, Melanie wrote:


actually, the French move, wanadoo buying freeserve, was probably a tactical

move by France Telecom who own wanadoo, and who equally own the search

engine voil�.  Clearly, by taking over freeserve, they also hope to increase

awareness of and traffic to voil�, which arrived quite late in the UK

market, and so taking over one of the largest of the UK's ISPs made sense

for  number of reasons from their perspective.


In a long winded reply, Tim said:


Well, as far as I know - I left Voila last month - France Telecom have now

closed down this portal and have no plans to relaunch it in the UK.  I got

the sense that there was actually a huge ammount of infighting between Voila

and Wanadoo.  Just to give some back ground:  back in the old era of paid

for ISP's, France Telecom embarked on  strategy which would offer a serice

to all on the web (in France any way).  There was the ISP strategy - called

Wannado, which dealt in areas that they were traditionally verystrong in-

call centres, service delivery, billing etc.  The portal associated with

this service as meant to deliver premier content.  This service, was only

available to the paying customers of the ISP, so France Telecom also built a

portal, open to all web users, called Voila.  Voila was developed from the

propietary search engine on Wannado - also called Voila - and benefitted

from the associated traffic.  FT then took the strategy international.  In

the meantime, the market began to morph, until we ended up with the free ISP

model.  Now the portal on the ISP became one of the most important areas

(don't forget that this time last year we were all looking at Alta Vist

type, completely free ISP models) of income.  Internally, I guess that this

meant that the Voila and Wannado teams had a huge fight for budget - after

all, why run two portals that essentially do the same thing??  The result

has been that the head of Voila, in France, a guy called Laurent Soulmiac,

got sacked and the Voila portal strategy has been internationally pulled,

except for Voila France and Voila Spain.


Back to the point though. As far as I can see, France Telecom buying

Freeserve in the UK does make some sense.  Look at the bigger picture,

revenues from portals look set to increase.  In the mobile industry, it is

expected that revenue from data will begin to become increasingly important

with respect to those from voice revenues.  At the moment, the user has

several points of access to the internet eg - Open... for TV, Genie for the

mobile and Freeserve for the PC.  It's almost inconcievable that users will

not begin to demand a multi access platform to access the internet -

Vodaphone have realised this and have set up Vizavee.  France Telecom, in

the UK own Orange, they own 22% of NTL (it is hottly rummoured that they

intend to increase this holding) and now they own the countries largest ISP.


I agree with Melanie, France Telecom,  I don't think FT will sell off

Freeserve in the short term.  What's much more likely to happen is that you

will see the portal being rebranded as Wannado.  You'll also probobaly see

the portal assocaited with the orange network being rebranded as Wannado.

On top of that, it is my opinion that if FT have their way, they'll also be

buying the remaining 29% of \NTL (to give them a contrlling 51%) and the

portal there will also begin to be branded as Wannado.


That's just in the UK.  FT also own mobile operators, ISP's and cable TV

stations in many other European countries.  My guess is that FT plan to

build a mega consumer, multi access portal brand - Wannado - in all of these

teratories.


Yep - watch out - the Franch have a plan for internatioanl domination.

Scary thought eh!!


Tim


Given the above, I think it unlikely that the French are considering this as

a short term move, selling on to someone else in a couple of years, but

potentially more as a long term move into the UK telco market.


Tim Moore, you probably know most about this -what's going on? :-)


melanie


M�lanie BEECH

Chef de Projet


SYZYGY

20, rue des Jardins - 92601 Asni�res cedex

T�l : 01 41 11 67 88 - Fax : 01 41 11 67 68

<mailto:m.beech@>

m [dot] beechsyzygy [dot] net (mailto:m [dot] beechsyzygy [dot] net)

http://www.syzygy.net



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