REGISTRATION DOCUMENT AND FINANCIAL REPORT - Iliad

6. OVERVIEW OF THE GROUP’S BUSINESS
6.1 PRINCIPAL ACTIVITIES
training its technical support and customer service teams. Centrapel seeks to recruit operators who have
completed two years of post-baccalauréat level studies or who have experience working in technical support for
an ISP, and is also investing in providing training for its operators. All new employees are therefore given one
month’s training in support techniques before starting work answering customer calls. At December 31, 2007, the
Group’s call centers employed 2,275 people, compared with 1,603 people at December 31, 2006. This technical
support and customer service helpdesk operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A dedicated helpline for fully
unbundled customers was launched at the beginning of 2005.
Centrapel’s support team includes almost 400 employees based in Paris and elsewhere in France responsible
solely for dealing with problems related to local loop unbundling, including relations with France Télécom,
migration of lines and direct home assistance.
Centrapel also provides Free’s customers with an online support service available through Free’s website. This
service provides answers to user FAQs and allows Free’s customers to email specific questions to the support
service. Subscribers also have access to a virtual consultant and video clips featuring technical tips and advice.
With a view to reducing customer churn and contributing to the Group’s customer loyalty policy, Centrapel and
Total Call use high-quality software tools developed in-house. These tools are used for monitoring customer
relationships, handling faults and maintaining a log of problems encountered by customers. This customer loyalty
policy is part of the Group’s overall strategy to improve customer service resources and to provide advice to
customers who may wish to upgrade to other services provided by the Group.
6.1.4.2 Traditional Telephony segment
The Traditional Telephony segment encompasses the combined activities of the Group’s former Telephony and
Other Services segments. It includes switched fixed-line telephony (One.Tel and Iliad Telecom), resale of airtime
to operators (Kedra), directory services (mainly the ANNU reverse look-up directory accessible by Minitel,
telephone, Internet and SMS text messaging) and e-commerce operations (Assunet.com).
6.1.4.2.1 One.Tel
The fixed telephony operator One.Tel France SAS (“One.Tel”) was established in 1998, but was placed in
administration in June 2001 largely as a result of the financial difficulties encountered by its Australian parent
company. As part of the company’s December 2001 business continuity plan, the One.Tel trademark was
licensed to the Group for ten years by the UK company Centrica Telecommunications Ltd., the successor in
interest to One.Tel (UK).
The restructuring plan carried out after the takeover involved the migration of One.Tel’s voice traffic to the
Group’s network during the first half of 2002, improving the business’s gross margin, and the changeover from
One.Tel’s old billing system to the existing billing and customer tracking system developed by the Group’s
engineers.
Since its takeover by the Group, One.Tel has implemented a procedure for optimizing the cost of winning
customers and managing its customer base by recommending that all new customers provide bank details before
any new connection to the service, thus allowing for payment by direct debit. This measure, together with the
in-house development of an efficient billing system and heavy promotion of the use of carrier
pre-selection – automatically ensuring that customers’ calls use the Group’s network – has given One.Tel a high
bill collection rate and increased customer loyalty.
On a commercial level, as in the case of the Group’s Internet access offerings, One.Tel launched a very
competitive and simple offering in September 2002 at one eurocent per minute for local and national calls. For
international calls, One.Tel benefits from its past experience as part of a multinational group in its negotiations
with the leading international telecommunications operators. One.Tel is interconnected with several international
operators and with two trading platforms for buying and selling international call minutes, which enables it to
offer both competitive rates and a high level of quality for all its call destinations.
Against a backdrop of tighter control of marketing costs and the growing success of voice over ADSL services,
the number of One.Tel’s billed customers decreased from 220,000 in December 2006 to 168,254 at
December 31, 2007.
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