France Telecom
telecommunication company in France. It employs about 189,000 people and has nearly 90 million customers worldwide, including the French départements d'outre mer. In 2000, it had an annual revenue of 33.7 billion Euros.
Up to 1988, France Télécom was known as the Direction Générale des Télécommunications, a division of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. It became autonomous in 1991. It ceased to be a state monopoly on January 1 1998.
In 2004 France telecom is likely to have to pay back 1 billion euros in illegal subsidies it received from the French government, following an 18-month investigation by Mario Monti, the EC Competition Commissioner.
France Télécom owns several subsidiaries, like Wanadoo (first ISP in France, second in Europe), Orange (first mobile phone company in France) and Equant.
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