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Xavier Niel in France and Sergei Brin at Google have stamped their personalities on their companies. Niel changed the Internet across Europe by proving a 30 euro triple play was not only possible but extremely profitable. He started the first ISP in France in 1993 and built Free.fr from very little. He's now virtually a folk hero as well as a billionaire, but still thinks differently. St�phane Richard of France Telecom is a product of Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales and a distinguished government career. Xavi dropped out of school at 17 to start Minitel Rose. He's comfortable trying completely new approaches, including the first all IP DSL network in the west. That proved a brilliant move; his costs really are much lower and staff much fewer than any other company I've visited. Niel is very angry at new French taxes on the Internet and may pass them on as a price increase. Let's hope not; the entire Western world holds up France as a model. 
     Brin is willing to take risks to improve the Internet.  Google with AOL/TIme Warner were ready five years ago to build a WiFi network across the U.S. (I don't think anyone has reported that story previously but my source (not Levin) is definitive.  It would have been mostly or entirely ad-supported and both the numbers and engineering checked out. Google and the top management of Time Warner gave it a go, but the cable side of Time Warner vetoed it to prevent customers turning off their cable modems. 
If the FCC hadn't agreed to the AOL-TimeWarner merger in 2000, 95+% of the U.S. would have free/very cheap WiFi now.

Instead, the broadband plan is begging for someone like M2Z to step in. Let that be a lesson to the decisionmakers on the Comcast-NBCU deal. Just say no.

     Brin moved while young to the U.S. and became a computer geek. Like me and many others in technology, Sergei knows that in 2010 a gigabit is practical and being delivered in many places in Asia at low cost. A mutual friend tells me Sergei personally drove Google's gigabit initiative in order to show what's possible. It's working; the Australian national broadband network is considering increasing speeds and I know two small U.S. carriers ready to jump in. 

    Sergei spent his early years in the authoritarian Soviet Union of the 1970's. In China he sees "the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling.� (WSJ) "Mr. Brin said memories of that time - having his home visited by Russian police, witnessing anti-Semitic discrimination against his father - bolstered his view that it was time to abandon Google�s policy." (That's Brin's opinion; I'm less certain Americans should play a roll on issues within China. Tough issue.)