The fact is, Free is notoriously bad for watching youtube videos (they threshold bandwidth) and got bad rep recently about that along with a probe from the ARCEP (the telecom watchdog agency) on the topic, so this is seen as a kind of retaliation measure to the bandwidth hungry youtube.
I have been using Free for years, and now that I moved across the pond, I can safely say that Free is at least on par with Verizon for Youtube, probably better. And if we simply ignore the Youtube issue, Verizon is years behind Free, there is simply no comparison between the two. I get ~6/7Mbps here with Verizon, and I simply cannot watch a 720p video on Youtube. No problem with Vimeo, Twitch, Netflix etc.
The fact is, Free is notoriously bad for watching youtube videos (they threshold bandwidth) and got bad rep recently about that along with a probe from the ARCEP (the telecom watchdog agency) on the topic, so this is seen as a kind of retaliation measure to the bandwidth hungry youtube.