Surprise ! While French operators have continued to increase the price of their mobile plans in 2023, the new MonPetitForfait barometer reveals that the average is rather downward over the whole of last year. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Internet packages: where the former are down by 10.41%, the latter have increased by 7.8%.
Now that 2024 is here, the MonPetitForfait site takes stock of the year 2023 among operators and in particular their pricing practices. Like every month, it unveils its barometer of the prices of mobile and Internet packages available in France. However, 2023 was a particularly tough year for users who, with rare exceptions, all suffered repeated price increases on their subscriptions.
We therefore expected to see all the indicators in red for the whole year and, in fact, the observation is not very flattering when it comes to Internet packages. On the other hand, to everyone’s surprise, operators are doing much better when it comes to mobile plans, which have generally seen their prices fall over the last 12 months. A quick summary of the state of the market at the dawn of the new year.
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The price of Internet packages soared in 2023
The sentence is severe. According to MonPetitForfait, the average price of an Internet package in 2023 was €30.89/month, a drastic increase of 7.8% compared to 2022. It is not a good idea to go fiber in France. For once, Free will not be able to boast of being the cheapest on the market. This price goes to SFR, with its RED offer which offers fiber at an average price of €25.60/month.
On the other side of the spectrum, we unsurprisingly find Orange, with an average of €36.49/month. A first place that can be attributed in particular to the launch of Livebox 7 which, according to UFC-Que Choisir, allowed the operator to considerably increase the price of its Internet packages. In addition, if we only take into account very high speed (i.e. reception at more than 500 Mbits/s), the average price increases €45.94/monthan increase of 10.01% over one year.
The best in terms of mobile plans
It would have been very difficult to predict that the price of mobile plans would ultimately fall over the whole year, as there were so many price increases among operators in 2023. And yet, over the whole year, the average price of 4G and 5G packages is €21.66/month according to the MonPetitForfait barometer, a drop of 10.41% compared to 2022. In January 2024, the monthly cost of a mobile plan with at least 15 GB of data is €21.63/month — 8.8% less than in January 2023.
On the same subject — Orange and SFR considerably increase the price of their packages with this formidable scheme
If you are looking for the cheapest operator on the market, you will have to look at Auchan Télécom, which displays a good average of €9.85/month. If, on the other hand, 5G is essential for you, turn instead to Lyca Mobile, and its plans at €11.34/month on average. In 4G as in 5G, the worst performer is none other than SFR, systematically followed by Orange then Bouygues Telecom. Free, for its part, is in the middle of the ranking.
Source: MonPetitForfait