Internet in France

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In metropolitan France, intense competition between Internet service providers has led to the introduction of moderately-priced high speed ADSL up to 28 Mbit/s (ATM), VDSL2 up to 100 Mbit/s, and FTTX up to 1 Gbit/s from €26 per month.[1] They often include other services such as unlimited free VoIP telephone communications to land lines, and digital television. Dial-up internet access is considered outdated.

Since around 2003, quotas have been seen as outdated and consequently, all the fixed broadband internet offers in France are unmetered.

Lines

On 3 December 2008, France had 16.3 million broadband connections, of which 94% are ADSL subscribers.[2] This makes France the second largest ADSL market in Europe. At the end of 2005, 30% of those DSL lines were unbundled, and 37% of those unbundled lines were totally unbundled without any direct invoicing of the historical operator and a greater progression rate than partial unbundling.[3] At the end of September 2005, more than 95% of the population can have a DSL connection, albeit some of them only 512/128.

ADSL market

  • Orange (formerly France Télécom, which used the brand Wanadoo) is the leader with half of the market with 41.7% (June 2012), helped by the reputation and availability of physical shops of the incumbent operator. Historically, it had overcome slightly higher prices because of its obligation of using fixed prices.[citation needed]
  • Free and Alice (subsidiary of Iliad) with 23.01% of the market (French Wikipedia page)
  • SFR with 22.95% of the market (end of 2007). This company has acquired Neuf Cegetel and Tele2 (Neuf Cegetel (Louis Dreyfus Group) has previously merged his ADSL activities with Cegetel (Vivendi Universal), Club Internet (ex-Deutsche Telekom) and AOL). In 2014, it was acquired by Numericable, which had become the only nationwide cable provider of the country following many buyoffs, whereafter the two brands merged.
  • Bouygues Telecom with 5.77%. (French Wikipedia page)
  • Other operators (DartyBox, NordNet, OVH, Prixtel, Budget Telecom, Coriolis Télécom, Virgin Mobile, Vivéole, FDN, Nerim, Magic OnLine…) with 6,57 %.

The Orange competitors begin to gain more subscribers, which means that Orange had a subscription decline.

ADSL offers

The market is oriented towards stopping the price war, and offering more services at a price going from €20 to €38:

  • maximum throughput permitted by the line, either 24 Mbit/s (maximum of ADSL2+), 28 Mbit/s (Broadcom non-standard ADSL2+ deployed on Free network) or 100 Mbit/s (maximum of VDSL2 profile 17a) depending on the line length and type of DSLAM.
  • unlimited telephony to land lines in Europe, North America (even mobile phones), and a few dozens of other countries.
  • television with the broadcasting of the young terrestrial digital TV and paid satellite TV.

Those triple play offers were initiated by Free with the Freebox modem, and are expanding to all major players, driving the French market.[4]

Bouygues Telecom lowered the first price of standard triple-play offers to €20 in February 2015.[5] Those prices are being attained with complete unbundling, saving the monthly €15 for the POTS subscription while retaining the triple play services. Those offers of naked DSL are also available in non-unbundled areas, and can lead to the economy of the traditional telephone subscription.[6][7]

ADSL technology

After selling the first ADSL2+ offers in Europe, providing a speed of 18 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up in 2004, French operators continue to offer new services, driven by the competition. It is possible to use videotelephony, video on demand, Reach Extended ADSL for 8 km lines soon. Experiments aren't any more the Iliad/Free trademark: they recently demonstrated an aggregated 174 Mbit/s link,[8] while Telecom Italia innovates on the service with a free hotline and Orange is pushing VDSL.

In December 2005, Free enabled a TV multicasting service on the customer's local network, an open solution based on RTSP.[9] This completes the media center capability of the freebox, also using the VideoLAN project.[10] They launched on April 2006 a new Freebox divided in two devices with DVB-T and HDTV capabilities and a Mimo WiFi network.[11]

Quadruple play, triple play with mobile communications, is available.

Around 2007, fixed broadband operators experimented dual mode mobile offers, such as Neuf Cegetel selling for €200 and €1 along with its Twin plan,[12] a GSM/WiFi hybrid telephone after the experimental beautifulphone, by the means of a QTek 8300 and Wanadoo selling Unik, a Motorola, Nokia or Samsung handset for €100.[13] These offers have not been widely taken up by consumers and ceased operating a few years later.[14]

Other Technologies

France has seen the development of other types of networks applications, such as Sigfox's "ultra narrow band" radio network, covering of up to 80% of the country in 2012.[15] Bosch, and other companies such as Ericsson and Cisco Systems have created similar connective applications, with Bosch having sold over 50 thousand networked heating systems in the country as of 2015. Sigfox and French companies, SYSMECA and Airbus, are partnering to embark on the “MUSTANG Project”, a drive to offer both earth- and satellite-based Machine to Machine communication worldwide. They are partly publicly funded, with the French Future Investments Programme, through the Agence Nationale de la Recherche.[16][17][18]

Anti-piracy law

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Main article: HADOPI law

In May 2009, a bill was approved by the French National Assembly to prevent internet piracy. After being caught at downloading illegal files three times, a user's connection might be suspended. It only targets open peer-to-peer file sharing networks.[19][20]

References

  1. ↑ Bouygues Telecom : guide des tarifs
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Bouygues Telecom mise sur son offre triple-play à 19,99 euros pour casser les prix du marché on RTL
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Free Assistance justifie la disparition de Freephonie au profit de Free Wifi Secure on Univers Freebox
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

see also

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