Free Mobile and the mysterious network 208-16: why orange roaming will improve

In recent months, the 208-16 network has appeared in certain French regions.This new identifier is linked to the Free Mobile network.We have investigated its dissemination and usefulness.

Free mobile and orange: where it all starts

It all started at the end of 2009, when Free obtained its license to become a mobile operator.One of the conditions of the approval is to cover 27 % of the population at the time of the launch of the offer.For the rest, the newcomer must therefore be an ally.

At first, no operator wishes to accompany Free, then Orange triggers the step shortly after the arrival of Stéphane Richard at his head.On March 2, 2011, a national roaming agreement was signed.This contract incorporates the voice, the data and a cecking mechanism in 2G and 3G.Free can therefore launch the marketing of its mobile offers.

On January 10, 2012, Xavier Niel launched Free Mobile and plans to deploy relay antennas throughout the territory.

This homelessness agreement with Orange concerns 2G (regulatory way, imposed by Arcep) and 3G (commercially).Concretely, free mobile subscribers can connect to an orange cell, using the 2G and 3G frequencies of the historic operator, its antennas and its active installations.A bargain for Free Mobile, because the mobile operator has no 2G license and its coverage of the territory is not yet at the level of its competitors.

In July 2019, according to the latest figures published, there are 18,694 3G antennas from Free Mobile, including 15,391 activated, or coverage of 82.3 % of the territory.For 4G, these are 16,235 antennas authorized to emit and 12,887 are activated.

According to Free Mobile Netstat, the rate of use of the clean network Free Mobile is 79.8 % against 13.7 % for the Orange network and 7 % in femtocell (via the Optical Adsl-Fiber Box).

The mysterious network 208-16

Without going too much in technical details, mobile networks can be identified via an MCC and a MNC.These nomenclatures are simple to understand: the MCC represents the country, and the MNC represents the network of an operator.In France, the MCC is 208.Orange, for example, with its MNC 01 therefore emits with the identifier 208-01.In practice, there are two MNCs from time to time, Orange has 01 for its main network and 02 for white areas.

Since its launch, and even before during the tests, Free Mobile issues under the operator code 208-15 (208-14 was already present before and was used for its internal tests).You just have to manually scan the networks available around you to notice.In recent months, a second network named 208-16 has appeared in certain areas.Arcep had already given Authorization to Free Mobile to use this MNC since 2012.

Our research started after several of our readers reported the appearance of this mysterious network 208-16.

We got closer to Fmobile-which offers an application for iPhone to remove homelessness-in order to map these famous relay antennas that broadcast the 208-16 network.

The creator of Fmobile helped us in our research by pushing an update of his application which allowed him to collect these precious data.This test allowed us to see that the 208-16 network was deployed on part of France, towards Nantes, Lyon and the Côte d'Azur.

Free Mobile has therefore launched a large deployment of a second network.Then comes the question that everyone is asking: why?

208-16: its proven utility

At this point, we have identified this network more precisely, but we do not yet know its usefulness.We therefore carried out tests near the relay antennas where the 208-16 network appears.Approaching the antennas is not a problem, we capture the 208-16 network and we connect there in the same way as the 208-15 network.The first feedback from the Free Mobile community quickly led us to change the conditions of the tests.Close to these cells, we went to the metro, in underground parking lots, or even in elevators.The objective of these maneuvers was to force our smartphone to switch to orange roaming, because the devices that are at 3G or 4G cover limits switch to 2G to avoid interference.

The 208-16 network appears instead of the operator's name

If you are a free mobile user, you have probably noticed that your smartphone could pass on the orange network when that of Free Mobile was not available.Very often, the user experience becomes quite bad with the very reduced flows of these networks.Worse, your smartphone does not automatically return to Free Mobile when the conditions are better.To save his battery, he can wait up to 30 minutes to launch a complete scan of the available networks and find the Free Mobile network.

Our experiences, observations and those of other users show different behavior on the 208-16 network: the smartphone automatically connects to the Free Mobile network (208-16) as soon as it is available again makes it more experiencePleasant for the user.Instead of launching a complete scan of the available networks, the smartphone seems to know precisely and in advance the priority frequencies.

We can therefore imagine that Orange and Free Mobile have deployed changes to the operation of networks in places where we find the 208-16 network to allow smartphones to recover these priority frequencies.As you can expect, this significantly improves the performance of the Free Mobile network.

NPERF, with whom we exchanged, confirmed to us to have observed an improvement in free mobile operation in the PACA region in areas where the 208-16 network is very present.Moreover, RNC Mobile has also noted a boost of the use of the clean network of Free Mobile since the beginning of the year.One would think that this increase is linked to the deployment of free mobile antennas compatible 700 MHz, but it seems very likely that this is rather due to the appearance of the 208-16 network.

This new operation of the Free Mobile network should significantly improve the experience of Free Mobile user that uses the Orange network.

Orange and Free Mobile have not answered our questions at the moment, but it is a safe bet that the deployment of the 208-16 network will be widespread on French territory.This is good news for free mobile users, because this 2G roaming is not ready to stop since as the last observatory of the 1st quarter published by Arcep shows.This technology is still used.As we said above, Free Mobile does not have a 2G license.

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