Wanadoo ready to push VoIP and battle BT

As of Wednesday, Freeserve will officially be dead. Parent company France Telecom is burying the hippy-flavoured ISP and rebranding it under the Wanadoo label, all with a heavy broadband bias. The company is so keen to carve out a niche in the flourishing broadband sector that it's prepared to take a loss to do it.

Eric Abensur, UK CEO of Wanadoo, said today that a new broadband product, a 512Kbps-for-£17.99 offering, to be launched tomorrow in conjunction with the new branding, will actually cost them money.

The loss leader is just a part of the new Wanadoo strategy, with the company determined to haul the UK into the broadband fast lane, keep pace with the other European countries in which it does business and become "a challenger to BT on broadband".

As part of its new UK vision, Wanadoo is banking on adding another one million broadband scalps to its tally during the course of this year – it currently has about 2.5 million broadband subscribers in total.

Wanadoo also has visions of a residential gateway for all, with TV on-demand over DSL and phone-to-phone VoIP forming the backbone of the cash cow. Abensur also said that the home gateway – with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, VoIP and TV-on-demand capabilities – could hit consumers by summer of this year.

The marketing emphasis won't be put on the VoIP and TV side then – Wanadoo will wait till this winter before showing off its "voice proposition for all broadband customers". No pricing details were revealed but the company intends to launch a Wi-Fi-less version of the gateway for a reduced price.

To get the broadband revolution on the same footing as other European countries, Ofcom needs to take "bold decisions", Abensur said – namely on the subject of local loop unbundling – and added that "we need to change the way we do broadband in this country".

As well as adding new products to its range and pumping out new ads, Wanadoo will also be offering new and existing users additional security, with a 30-day trial of McAfee virus scanning and firewall, and a trial subscription to the ISP's music download service.