Internet in France

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 for €29,90 per month. 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 Dial-up internet access is considered outdated.

For many years now, quotas have been seen as outdated and consequently, all the broadband internet offers in France are now unmetered.

Lines

On 3 December 2008, France had 16.3 million broadband connections, of which 94% are ADSL subscribers.^[1] 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.^[2] 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 acquired 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 to overcome slightly higher prices because of its obligation of using fixed prices.
• 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).
• Bouygues Telecom with 5.77%. (French Wikipedia page)
• Other operators (DartyBox, NordNet, OVH, Prixtel, Budget Telecom, Coriolis Télécom, Virgin Mobile, Numericable, 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 around €30, slightly more for the incumbent operator:

• maximum throughput permitted by the line, either 8 Mbit/s (maximum of ADSL), 24 Mbit/s (maximum of ADSL2+) or 28 Mbit/s (Broadcom non-standard ADSL2+ deployed on Free network) depending on the line length and type of DSLAM
• unlimited telephony to land lines in Europe, North America (even mobile phones), China and India
• 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.^[3]

As the market matures, it is beginning to open to smaller "boutique" broadband suppliers that specialize in meeting the needs of specific market segments. For example, Teleconnect France has introduced an AngloPack ADSL/VOIP service for the 250,000 English-speaking expats residing in France, featuring 20 MB/s connection speeds; free calls to the UK, USA and other anglophone countries; provision of a local UK number permitting a user's family and friends to call the user's VOIP line in France at the cost of a local call; and full customer service in English. Teleconnect is the only broadband service provider in France with an English help desk.

First prices between €15 and €20 per month remain for a small usage with limited throughput around one megabit per second (but often ADSL2 max in unbundled zones). Those prices can also be 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 led to the economy of the traditional telephone subscription.^[4][5]

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,^[6] 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.^[7] This completes the media center capability of the freebox, also using the VideoLAN project.^[8] They launched on April 2006 a new Freebox divided in two devices with DVB-T and HDTV capabilities and a Mimo WiFi network.^[9]

Quadruple play, triple play with mobile communications, is available: Neuf Cegetel is selling for €200 and €1 with a plan Twin,^[10] a GSM/WiFi hybrid telephone after the experimental beautifulphone, by the means of a QTek 8300 and Wanadoo sells Unik, a Motorola, Nokia or Samsung handset for €100.^[11] Free develops a wifi mesh network of HD freeboxes to be used to provide mobile telephony and compete with traditional cellular operators.

Anti-piracy 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.^[12][13]

References