Although the launch of the France Très Haut Débit plan in 2013 was slow, its acceleration has finally produced good results. Metropolitan France will not be covered by 2022, as was initially planned, and it will take until 2025 - or even 2030 - for some regions to be fully covered. However, the investments made in deployment work have enabled the country to make a good comeback in the European rankings. France is now ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy with an average speed of over 50 Mb/s.

 

These efforts have resulted in a significant increase in subscriptions, as France now has more than 14 million fibre-optic customers. The country will soon have more fibre subscribers than xDSL Internet customers.

Orange is by far the leading fibre optic Internet provider with over 5.2 million customers, ahead of SFR (3.6 million), Free (3.3 million) and Bouygues Telecom (1.9 million).

 

Moreover, the health crisis has only accentuated the need for the French to be able to rely on a reliable and efficient Internet connection. So much so that in the real estate sector, the connection of properties to the fibre optic network is becoming an increasingly important criterion for buyers.

 

The current challenge is in rural areas, where fibre optics are more expensive to deploy and less profitable. This is why the State and local authorities are obliged to get involved through the RIPs (public initiative networks) to accompany the rollouts carried out by the operators. This is why the recovery plan decreed to revive the economy after the stoppage linked to Covid-19 provides for some 570 million euros for the deployment of optical fibre.

 

 

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Source : Les Numériques