French phone company Iliad unveiled its first offering in Italy on Tuesday, announcing the very ambitious goal of changing the mobile phone market with greater transparency and without unexpected additional costs. Iliad's offer, which has disrupted the French market in recent years, is rather aggressive: it has a monthly cost of 5.99 euros, and the other operators active in Italy fear the complications that the arrival of the new competitor could bring. Moreover, Iliad's strategy for Italy seems very similar to that followed in France: starting with very low rates to attract the largest possible number of new subscribers, on which to build the basis for subsequent expansions of the brand.
Iliad is a group founded in 1991 by the French businessman Xavier Niel, who at the end of the nineties introduced the Free brand in France with fixed and later mobile services. In Italy the Free brand is owned by Vodafone, so the company was forced to keep the name of the group that controls it.
The starting offer presented on Tuesday in Milan costs € 5.99 per month and includes 30 Gigabytes of internet traffic and unlimited minutes and SMS. There are no additional costs for answering machines, hotspots and other services, and Iliad undertakes to keep the rate “forever” without changing it over the next few years for those who have already subscribed. It is an interesting difference compared to other operators, who reserve the right to unilaterally change their offers already active towards customers. The “forever” offer will currently be reserved for the first million new customers: in this way Iliad is confident of collecting new contracts very quickly and immediately competing with other operators.
Iliad SIM cards to put on your smartphone can be purchased on the company's website or through the “simbox”, a sort of vending machine that the company has started to install in various Italian cities. The idea is to maintain a light and lean structure in the distribution network, precisely to reduce costs to a minimum and consequently to be able to maintain low rates for customers. The company will have some physical stores, among others in Rome, Catania and Milan.
During the presentation of the company, the managing director of Iliad Italia, Benedetto Levi (29), said that: “Users are fed up with the lack of clarity in the sector. There are those who have done the math: to fully check all the rates available in Italy and understand which is the most convenient, 25 hours of study would be needed “. Levi said that Iliad wants to demonstrate that “things can be done differently”.
It is not yet clear whether Iliad will be successful in Italy, where competition between telephone operators is already high and prices are all in all low, when compared with those of other countries. In France, the company was successful in part because rates were much more expensive ten years ago, especially for the internet, and there was therefore good scope for offering competitive rates.
Iliad in Italy is active with its own mobile network, so it is not a virtual operator that directly relies on other existing operators. This should allow the company to have greater control over its infrastructure, but for now there are doubts about its ability to cover all of Italy. The company took over part of the repeaters sold by Wind-3 after their merger and became no longer needed. However, where it does not have its own repeaters, Iliad will have to rely on Wind for roaming coverage, similar to how 3 did in previous years, relying first on TIM and then on Wind (the passage of the network will not be evident, nor will there be additional costs as happened with 3). Iliad has not yet provided very clear information on coverage and this could be its weak point, in a country where for geographical reasons it is not always easy to have a signal to call and surf.
