Mobile plan: from 25 euros per hour in 2000 to all unlimited for half the price in 2020

De 2000 à 2020, le forfait mobile a changé d'ère : les communications ne sont plus qu'un service (illimité) parmi une offre très large et la différence entre les opérateurs se joue désormais sur la quantité de datas disponible. Bonne nouvelle pour le porte-monnaie des clients, le sans engagement est devenu la norme, faisant drastiquement baisser la facture mensuelle. Voici le 7e épisode de notre série sur la « valse des prix » au 21e siècle.

December 1999, the euro has not yet replaced the franc and consumers snap up SFR's Millenium plan: for 265 francs per month (about 40 euros), calls are free between 8 p.m. end to operator subscribers and landlines. The offer is an event and the happy beneficiaries swear loyalty to it for life... or try to resell it second-hand 2 years later for a fortune when the time comes for the changeover to the single currency. The 400,000 customers who subscribe to Millenium are far from imagining that in 2020, 77 million SIM cards would be in service, including nearly 69 million linked to a plan much cheaper than theirs, according to figures from the electronic communications and posts (ARCEP).

Back in 2000. At that time, the best of the best was the Ola package from Itinéris (which became Orange a year later). It costs 165 francs for one hour of communication (i.e. a little less than 25 euros) and the average mobile bill for French subscribers amounts to 26.2 euros excluding tax (VAT at 19.6% then at 20% from 2014). It continues to rise thereafter to reach 28.7 euros in 2004 before falling continuously to reach 15.8 euros in 2019.

La révolution Free, en 2012

The break, and the symbolic passage below 20 euros, occurred in 2012 with the arrival of a fourth operator from Internet boxes, Free. Xaviel Niel's firm offers a 2-hour package at 2 euros (0 euro for its Internet subscribers), a duration then billed 25 euros by Orange, and another unlimited for 19.99 euros (15.99 for Internet subscribers) when the competition proposes a bill of around 80 euros for an equivalent service. Thus, between 2010 and 2012, the average bill fell from 21.7 euros to 17.2 according to calculations by Arcep.

In the end, in 20 years, the fall in prices excluding VAT and the rise in the gross hourly minimum wage have divided by 2.5 the number of hours of work needed to pay for an average telephone plan. If you had to work 4.1 hours in 2000, 2.4 hours were enough in 2012 and only 1.6 hours in 2019.

Le sans engagement, nouvelle norme

Above all, Free has brought about the advent of non-binding: the telephone no longer goes hand in hand with the package chosen (which caused the monthly price to rise) and can be bought, sometimes very expensive, separately. A lighter format for the monthly budget that appealed to 7 out of 10 customers in 2017.

Pour contrer l’arrivée de Free, Orange développe Sosh, SFR crée RED et Bouygues lance B&You, des marques low-cost, sans engagement, au service client limité et dont la gestion de compte se fait en ligne. Au même moment, des opérateurs virtuels (La Poste mobile, Virgin Mobile, NRJ Mobile, les banques ou les marques de grande distribution) apparaissent mais leur part reste marginale dans un secteur dominé à 86% par Orange (19,3 millions de clients), SFR (14,5 millions ), Bouygues (11,7 millions)... et Free (13,3 millions).

La bataille des datas

In 2020, the best packages are distinguished by the amount of data - data downloaded to the phone via the telephone network or the Internet network - offered. Each French person consumes an average of nearly 10GB per month via, for example, Messenger, Whatsapp or Telegram messaging applications, but also social networks such as Facebook or Instagram.

Ainsi, selon le comparatif réalisée par CNet France en août 2020, les meilleurs offres du moment sont le forfait RED de SFR avec 80Go de data et les appels et SMS (dont l’usage est en baisse) illimités pour 14 euros par mois, ou encore un forfait à moins de 10 euros de La Poste Mobile avec 30Go de data. Quant au forfait de Free à 2 euros, il reste limité au strict minimum (50Mo) pour Internet quand le forfait à 19,99 euros propose lui 100Go. Une capacité que Bouygues, via B&You, propose pour 15,99 euros. On retrouve aussi de nombreuses offres avantageuses dont le prix augmente passé le premier anniversaire.

Result a standard package at 12 euros per month, average of 2019, for unlimited calls and 50GB of data. Millenium has paled.

Série d’été : « la valse des prix »

Here are the first episodes of our series on the waltz of prices in the 21st century: