Freebox
multimedia box provided by Free to its Internet, TV and telephone subscribers

The Freebox is an ADSL-VDSL-FTTH modem and a set-top box that the French Internet service provider named Free (part of the Iliad group) provides to its DSL-FTTH subscribers.
Its main use is as a high-end fixed and wireless modem (802.11g MIMO), but it also allows Free to offer additional services over ADSL, such as IPTV including high definition (1080p), Video recording with timeshifting capabilities, digital radio and VoIP telephone service via one RJ-11 connector (the first version came with 2 such jacks but only one was ever activated).
The Freebox is provided free to the subscribers, its value being EUR 190, according to the operator. It is delivered with a remote control, a multimedia box equipped with a 250 GB hard drive, and accessories (cables and filters). At the end of Q2 2005, more than 1.1 million subscribers were equipped with the Freebox. According to company official's results publication, the 2 million level of Freeboxes were reached in September 2006.
V6 generation, Freebox Révolution
The sixth generation device is called the Freebox Révolution or V6 (Version 6). It was launched in early 2011. It is composed of a pair of devices: the ADSL modem/router and the IPTV set top box/media player. The boxes were designed by Philippe Starck.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Freebox” is multimedia box provided by Free to its Internet, TV and telephone subscribers. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Freebox, multimedia and provided, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3087306. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005, 2006 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Freebox” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.