France Telecom:
France Télécom (Euronext: FTE, NYSE: FTE) is the main telecommunication company in France and one of the largest in the world. It currently employs about 191,000 people (half outside of France) and has nearly 159 million customers worldwide (2007). For the twelve months ending September 2004 it had revenue of US$60.11 billion. The current CEO is Didier Lombard.
[edit] History
Up to 1988, France Télécom was known as the Direction Générale des Télécommunications, a division of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. It became autonomous in 1990. It was privatized by Lionel Jospin's Plural Left government starting in January 1, 1998. Its headquarters are in Paris, 6 place d'Alleray.
[edit] Recent acquisitions and divestitures
In August 2005, FT acquired a 77% ownership in the Spanish mobile phone company Amena, rebranding it Orange España.
In December 2006, FT announced the acquisition of DIWAN and SILICOMP specialized on the Customer Critical Application (CCA) and Security for enterprises
In November 2007, FT announced it had acquired a bid to secure 51% of Telkom Kenya's shares from the Government of Kenya, but will have to bring about 11% of shares back out onto the market three years following the deal.
In June 2008, FT abandoned a bid for Swedish operator TeliaSonera after the two companies failed to agree terms.
One of its most important subsidiaries was Telecom Argentina; France Télécom sold most of its shares in 2003, at the same time as it sold CTE El Salvador, and now only owns approximately 1% of Telecom Argentina.
[edit] Service Quality and Connection Availability
France has an unusually large proportion of overhead, as opposed to underground, phone lines. Underinvestment in infrastructure improvement has resulted in a steady decline in reliability and service availability, with certain areas of France experiencing widespread service failure several times per annum. Although a programme of fibre optic cabling is under way, it is a year behind schedule, and parts of the French telephone network have some of the worst signal-noise ratios in Europe. France Telecom's standard broadband offering is the Livebox, a combined modem and Wi-Fi router, with over 6 million units sold by August 2008. The Livebox has been plagued with problems, however, and often requires extensive user intervention before it will function properly. Some Apple Mac users report that all attempts to use the Livebox's Wi-Fi connection have failed, even after repeated calls to France Telecom's helpline. Broadband linespeeds can also be significantly less than advertised, particularly in rural areas where customers may be a considerable distance from their nearest exchange, in which case peak-time performance can be similar to that available with a 56K modem.
[edit] Subsidiaries
France Télécom is a communications access provider offering customers access through multiple platforms. The four key platforms France Télécom operates are:
- fixed line telephone, mainly in France and Poland.
- broadband access.
- mobile phone telephony.
- most recently, IPTV, though currently only in France and Spain, with MaLigne TV, now known as Orange TV.
France Télécom has already begun merging the different internal divisions managing each platform and they now almost all operate under the Orange brand. (See "Wanadoo is to make way for Orange").
France Télécom is present in the US through its Equant enterprise services and its venture capital arm, Innovacom as well as two R&D labs: one in Boston and the other in South San Francisco, California.
As a result of deregulation, France Télécom operates phone booth in Wellington, New Zealand.
OpenTransit is France Télécom's backbone network. It covers Europe, the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, and loops back to Paris.
GlobeCast is the world largest provider of transmission of satellite and production services for professional broadcast, online content and enterprise multimedia. Globecast World TV is a division of GlobeCast.
In 2004 France Télécom is likely to have to pay back €1 billion in alleged unlawful subsidies (in breach of state aid rules) it received from the French government, following an 18-month investigation by Mario Monti, the EC Competition Commissioner. It is understood that both France Télécom and the French government are appealing this decision.
The former CEO of France Télécom Thierry Breton was appointed in 2002 after leaving his previous company Thomson SA (formerly THOMSON Multimedia SA, owner of the legendary American brand RCA) where he served as the CEO. On February 25, 2005, he has been appointed Minister of Finance and Industries.
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