In 2003, telecom operators thought Wi-Fi was just another word for HotSpot. The only thinkable way to use this technology was to install a terminal in a café or hotel, and charge huge amounts of money for a couple of minutes’ connection… after a lengthy and tedious registration process.
To build an urban network offering total connectivity seemed inconceivable. "Wi-Fi isn’t designed for that", "it’ll never work" was heard more often than not.

2003: And yet, it does work…

However, during the summer of 2003, the then ART (French Telecoms Regulation Authority, now ARCEP) authorized the use of Wi-Fi frequency bands outside of buildings. In September 2003, Ozone obtained a licence to construct a network in Paris and open it to the public.

Ozone thought the best way to find out if a wide urban Wi-Fi Network was feasible was quite simply to build it. To confront theories to reality in the field. All it took was to set up a few antennas and interconnect them. Thus the first antennas were installed in the South of Paris’ 13th arrondissement in September 2003. The perimeter was ideal: highly diversified in terms of architecture and topology (a combination of 30-story blocks, 19 th century Haussman-style buildings, suburban-looking alleys, and medium-sized recent constructions); diversified enough in terms of population (potential user behaviour not affected by over-representation of a given social category). With an upstream connection to the British Telecom network, the first antennas connected four buildings with one another. Access to the service was opened to users in October 2003, free of charge.

This pragmatic approach gave Ozone a chance to study the concrete constraints imposed by the construction of a Wi-Fi-based metropolitan network, and the supply of a direct wireless access to the end-user. Analysis was carried out in the light of users’ real behaviours and spending patterns, of the performances of Wi-Fi and available equipment, of the actual quality of reception obtained by the users.

Our initial conclusions were:

Relevance of the offer: users showed real interest in a free Wi-Fi connection, especially with the rate of Wi-Fi equipment increasing exponentially. A user who has tasted Wi-Fi no longer imagines that he can be restrained in terms of space. Such expectations are absolutely not addressed by the offer of HotSpots.

Performance: interestingly, quite a few of the limitations supposed to plague Wi-Fi in theory, turned out not to be a problem in actual fact: range, interference, or penetration. On the other hand, some unpredictable problems did appear: erratic user behaviour, upscaling etc.

Technical solutions: back in 2003, the offer for Wi-Fi technical solutions was relatively limited and ill-adapted to the context in which we were implementing it.

Bolstered by users’ enthusiasm, and the natural increase in Wi-Fi equipment penetration, armed with a set of concrete issues to resolve, Ozone started working hard on developing solutions to allow the large-scale deployment of a metropolitan-wide Wi-Fi network.

2004: scaling up

2004 was a scaling up year for the OzoneParis network. With its main transmitters in place on top of high-rise blocks in the 13 th arrondissement, Ozone could now reach 70% of buildings within Paris’ city limits. The network was therefore ready to expand beyond the 13 th and get a foothold in the 11 th and 12 th districts.

Access to the service was still free. The influx of new users grew steadily, each one an individual contributor to our performance measurement.

In 2004, Ozone started developing its own solutions, every time it turned out that no existing technology could address a given issue in its specific context.

The year 2004 was rich in technological achievements for Ozone: resolution of technical constraints for installation and management of antennas on building roofs; technical capacity to handle an infrastructure of more than just a handful of antennas; improvement of emission quality through the use of directional Wi-Fi connections exceeding 10 kilometres; development of the “Ombrelle” to allow users located in borderline or badly oriented areas to obtain a better signal.

2005: the value of a service

Early in 2005, Ozone decided to start charging users to access the service. Make or break: was our Wi-Fi access good enough for consumers to want to pay for it? The verdict fell fast: within the first couple of weeks, 65% of free Ozone service users chose to subscribe to the new pay formula. One year later, the rate has reached 80%. We finally had a confirmation that our venture was truly relevant to the public, and what’s more in a city like Paris, where there are a great many ways on offer to access the Internet.

2005 marked the start of rapid growth for both our network and user numbers. From our presence in just 3 Paris arrondissements at the end of 2004, 2005 ended with installations in almost every district. As of March 2005, the antenna count grew by 10% per month, the number of users by 23% per month.

2006: beyond the Paris network

The growth rate achieved in 2005 now seems to confirm the possibility of achieving full coverage for Paris by the end of 2006.

And 2006 will also see extension of the Ozone model beyond Paris. Ozone’s venture has generated much interest, both in France and abroad, and a number of new players will initiate deployment of Ozone networks in other towns and villages, in France, Europe and elsewhere. All these networks will be based on technologies and knowledge Ozone has acquired in the course of its real-life confrontation with the market and its teething problems.

In addition to the supply of a fuller network, the year 2006 will also witness the emergence of Pervasive Services, especially in the field of mobile telephony.

Oblivious to the petty wars surrounding the “real-estate” broadband variety (incarnated by DSL), Ozone is pursuing its own ambition to create a true revolution in network uses, and is already preparing for the after-DSL world. At a time when many cities around the world, from San Francisco to Taipei, are announcing plans to construct total Wi-Fi networks, Ozone is quietly convinced that what it has started in Paris makes it one of the world’s pioneers for great things to come.