PARIS — French billionaire Xavier Niel, founder of telecommunications giant Iliad, sparked a heated debate this week when he appeared to admit that the company's Free Mobile wireless carrier integrated no-cost VPN into its service specifically to circumvent age verification restrictions on adult content.
The company launched and announced the service this past Tuesday. Dubbed Free mVPN, it is automatically included with several of the carrier's subscription tiers. Free Mobile claims that it is the first mobile carrier ever to include a free consumer VPN in its core mobile network.
Niel, who has been described as "the Richard Branson of France" and is known for his colorful background, framed the surprise feature launch as a gift to his fellow countrymen.
"A VPN should not be a luxury reserved for a select few," he said in a statement. "Once again, Free is giving purchasing power back to the French people."
The same day, French tech website MacGeneration posted on X.com, "Free Mobile includes a free VPN, which incidentally allows users to bypass anti-pornography blocking."
Niel responded by posting "'By chance,'" a response construed by many as winking sarcasm, given the country's ongoing legal tussle over age verification.
Thierry Sother, a Socialist Party member of the French National Assembly, was among many who interpreted Niel's remark as an admission that the mVPN service is at least partially intended to facilitate unimpeded access to adult content.
On Thursday, Sother reported mVPN to Arcom, posting his complaint on his BlueSky profile.
"On Tuesday, September 16, the company Free, a French mobile telephone operator and one of the main internet access providers in France, announced the launch of a VPN service integrated directly into the Free mobile network and accessible at no additional cost, without installing a third-party application, to all subscribers who have subscribed to the Free 5G Package and Free Series offers," the complaint reads.
Sother goes on to call out the company for deliberately circumventing the country's age verification law, saying that mVPN "directly threatens compliance with the legal obligations imposed, for this purpose, on certain companies."
As of publication, neither Niel nor Arcom have publicly responded to Sother's complaint.
France's Law Aiming to Secure and Regulate the Digital Space (SREN), passed in late 2023, has faced multiple legal challenges and accusations of selectively targeting specific websites. One French senator described SREN as being more about complicating the lives of porn publishers than about online safety.
There has also been a tug-of-war in the French courts over whether the law can force sites based outside the country to comply with its restrictions. The law was suspended for non-French EU-based sites this past June, reinstated in July and then used by French media regulator Arcom in August to target five non-French websites.
Two of those sites had previously challenged France’s contention that SREN gives it jurisdiction over sites based in other countries, appealing their case to the Council of State, France's highest administrative court. In turn, the Council of State asked the EU Court of Justice to rule on the matter under the EU's Digital Services Act.
On Thursday, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the EU Court of Justice handed down a non-binding opinion advising the French court that France can indeed require pornographic websites based in other EU nations to implement age verification in accordance with French law.
Whether the timing is deliberate or merely serendipitous, the arrival of Free Mobile's no-cost VPN times out well for users seeking to visit adult websites that could either geoblock their service in France, as Pornhub has done, or implement AV, a process many users have sought to avoid due to privacy concerns.
VPN usage has ticked markedly upward since age verification was implemented.