Afone all over town

La ville d'Angers a chargé l'opérateur Afone de doter la ville d'un réseau internet haut débit en accès libre. Les habitants pourront ainsi bénéficier sur leur smartphone ou leur tablette d'une très large gamme de services. Pour la société angevine, l'initiative de la ville peut augurer d'autres marchés pour son réseau, WifiLib.

About one month after it was chosen by the French government to host the first city of connected items, Angers city has renewed its commitment to develop the electronic communications and the numerical economy. To do so, the city council has entrusted a local company, Afone, to spread out a network all over the town. Last year, the operateur had already settled several dozens of terminals in down town allowing internauts to be connected without subscription to a network 100 times more powerful than the usual networks for households.

Credit pictures : Afone and Angers city

With the enlargement of the network range, much more numerous holders of smartphones or tablets will get the opportunity to stay in touch to internet, to have access to videos and this, for free. The only formality is to enter his profile one time only. That one includes datas about the hobbies and interests of the internauts who will receive news related to their expectations, their tastes and the places they are with geo localization. Those services are themselves conceived by companies dedicated in telemonitoring, health, education...

Afone bets on the development of the needs in numerical technologies which, according to Eurepean surveys will soar until 2017. The Angers operator is in touch with other French cities themselves interested with its network, the WifiLib. Angers looks to be for Afone a propicious place because 50,000 students live there who are born with the no charged internet access era. The contract has been signed for ten years.

Afone was created in 1997 and got eigh years later its licence of operator. The company was the first to launch an offer dedicated to retail store keepers and self employed professionals. In 2009, the Afone gave to individuals access to a mobile phone offer. The 2012 turnover of Afone was 83 millions euros with 12,000 customers.