Free convicted for misleading communication on 5G

The Free operator will have to pay €15,000 to Familles Rurales for several deceptive practices linked to 5G. In detail, the consumer association criticizes the company's communication between the end of December 2020 and the beginning of January 2021, in other words at the time when the first 5G antennas were starting to light up almost everywhere in France.

5G not without additional cost and not as fast

At the time, Free promised a speed “ up to 3 times faster than 4G », the absence of additional costs, broad coverage (“ already 40% of the population covered by 5G in France ), as well as the mapping of this coverage on its website. At the start of 2021, Familles Rurales filed a complaint against Free, accusing the operator of misleading consumers regarding 5G “at no extra cost”: in fact, you had to buy a new compatible smartphone, because at the time they were very few to support new networks.

Another complaint, this time about the performance of the network: it is the famous debate on the “real” 5G, which attaches to the core network of 3.5 GHz, and the “false” 5G which recycles the frequency band of 700 MHz used by 4G. Free relied heavily on the 700 MHz band to cover the territory very quickly, but with speeds out of all proportion to “real” 5G.

The operator has since installed 3.5 GHz antennas and announced last September the deployment of 5G SA, which should finally deliver the promises of 5G in terms of speeds and latency.

We were not there at the time of the Familles Rurales complaint, which got off to a bad start: in March 2022, the Paris judicial court in fact sided with the operator. The association appealed, and therefore won its case this time, in a judgment dated November 22. Free’s communication on the four points raised is indeed “ misleading ”, according to the court.

Free did not want to comment on the judgment, which remains subject to appeal to the Court of Cassation. The file is therefore not yet completely closed. On the side of Familles Rurales, a group action is now planned to compensate consumers who had to equip themselves with new smartphones to benefit from the announced speeds.