Fergie's Tech Blog

16 April 1996: France Télécom Introduces Wanadoo

Wanadoo is a French Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is a subsidiary of France Télécom. It operates in France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Mauritius, Madagascar, Lebanon & Jordan.

The origin of the name Wanadoo is subject to some controversy, as some maintain it came about in the late 1990s when many internet companies competed to choose 'Yahoo' sounding names. However it might be that the name Wanadoo first appeared in an internal project at France Télécom, much in line with a number of other such projects such as Intranoo, Tatoo, Netatoo and @noo.

Wanadoo was floated on the stock market on 18 July 2000. In 2000, Wanadoo also took over the major British ISP Freeserve, which had previously been part of the Dixons Group (now DSG International plc). Following the buy-out, Freeserve maintained its own branding for a while before finally changing to the Wanadoo name on 28 April 2004.

Wanadoo is currently the largest ISP in Europe (counting the subscribers of Telekomunikacja Polska) with over ten million subscribers, largely concentrated in France, the UK, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland.

posted by Fergie @ 4/15/2006 10:01:00 PM