Users of the French phone company are experiencing problems caused by geoblocking. Technicians, however, should resolve everything in a few days
After the grand launch on May 29, Iliad technicians continue to work on resolving some of the first hiccups that have arisen since the launch. The Iliad offer, with unlimited minutes and SMS and 30 gigabytes of Internet at €5.99 per month, has in fact attracted the attentions of many Italian users, who have requested Iliad SIMs from the Internet, from SIM boxes or from one of Iliad's physical stores.
This has ended up flooding the organizational and structural machine of the French-origin phone company, with inevitable consequences for the first subscribers. While some are complaining of delays in SIM delivery, others have experienced problems with Internet browsing. In particular, some sites are unreachable while surfing under the French operator's data connection. The problem is related to geoblocking, the practice of blocking access to multimedia content depending on the country of residence of the user.
How does geoblocking work? Simple: the provider of multimedia services (such as Netflix, YouTube, RaiPlay SkyGo or Premium Play) "reads" the IP address of the Internet user who wants to watch a video or listen to streaming music and determines whether he can access the catalog or not. Some Iliad users are found to have a French IP address and, therefore, can not see SkyGo or some TV series Netflix.
How to check if you are subject to geoblocking
If you are among the tens of thousands of users who have already subscribed to the Iliad offer (official numbers, at the moment, have not been released) and want to remove any doubt whether or not you are a victim of geoblocking you can perform a simple test. Connect with your smartphone (or tethering) to one of the sites listed above (such as RaiPlay) and wait for the site to load. If everything goes smoothly, you are not blocked by geoblocking; if you see any error messages (in particular, server error) then it is likely that your SIM card has a French IP and you cannot access content licensed in Italy.
You should not worry though. The French phone company has let you know that its technicians are already working to solve the issue and within a few days at most you will not hear about Iliad geoblocking anymore.