[RFCI-Discuss] RBL And remote host

[csmailreport]

>
> On 12/29/07, Alan Brown <alanb at digistar.com> wrote:
> > They don't care, they're the government telco - and the french govt
> > bailed them out to the tune of AT LEAST 67 Billion Euro when they went
> > bankrupt 2 years ago. Nice (illegal) subsidies, if you can get 'em....
>
> I don't know where you got this information from -- France Telecom is a
> cash
> cow for the French government and has always payed their bills.
>
> Every time the government needs more money, they either take it from them
> or sell a small percentage of shares like 3 to 5 percent a few days ago
> to get 4 billion euros to fund French universities.
>
> So you appear seriously misinformed at best -- the money usually flows
> in the opposite direction, and that's quite normal since the telephone
> network
> deployment was financed by taxpayers in the second half of the 20th
> century.
>

You are indeed grossly misinformed, as some online research confirmed :

France Telecom had an outstanding debt of 70 billion euros in 2002,
they never received that amount of money from the government, unlike what
you stated:
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article176444.ece

Instead, the French government intended to loan them 9 billion euros in
2003,
which triggered an investigation from the European Union Commission:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article859618.ece

As I don't think this government loan was approved by the EU competitive
committee,
instead the French government had to sell France Telecom assets in 2003:

That had been reduced to 48 billion euros at the end of June 2004, through
> asset sales and the raising of capital in March 2003


and eventually take it public (privatize it) in September 2004, as explained
in:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/01/1093938978908.html

The government has long resumed milking its cash cow sincen selling shares
whenever it needs money: the latest example being in June 2007, when it sold
FT shares for 4 billion euros to repay its own debt:
http://www.teleclick.ca/2007/06/french-government-to-sell-up-to-7-of-france-telecom/

PS: I didn't point out inaccuracies when you stated France Telecom bought
the Dutch ISP (was it Euro.net ?) which was hosting SORBS only to close its
Dutch mirror...
why would anyone spend a few billion euros for SORBS is just laughable.
On the other hand, it would be stupid not to stop feeding the mouth that
bites you...
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