France's ILEC's ISP Makes Waves

France.internet.com reports that Compaq allied with France Telecom's ISP, Wanadoo, just as Wanadoo announced plans to go public in order to be able to finance acquisitions with stock. A buying binge across Europe may be in the offing.

by Alex Goldman
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet
[June 15, 2000]

According to france.internet.com, Compaq France has allied with French ISP Wanadoo. A Wanadoo icon will be installed on the desktop of some Compaq Presario and Prosignia models.

The service will offer:

• A connection kit, with instruction manual
• Internet access anywhere in France, at the price of a local call
• Permanent help, either online or over the telephone
• Up to five mailboxes
• 10MB of disk space for a web page

Although Compaq will build a portal, Compaq.net, it will not be a walled garden. The English-language version of Compaq.net is an MSN portal — it is a web page, not own-labelled software.

ISP Goes Public
The Compaq alliance was announced, conveniently, shortly before the announcement that Wanadoo will go public. Wanadoo, which is owned by France Telecom, has 5,000 employees in Europe and claims 1,395,000 subscribers.

France Telecom's President, Michel Bon, said that the success of the Internet arms of the incumbent operators in Spain (Telefonica), Italy (Telecom Italia), and Germany (Deutsche Telekom) had inspired the IPO.

He also admitted that Wanadoo needs stock to finance acquisitions. We may soon see a buying binge by incumbents' ISPs in Europe. This week, uk.internet.com reported that Deutsche Telekom's ISP, T-Online, made a takeover bid for Freeserve that will probably be worth £5bn ($7.65bn).

—End