Latest News : Free has launched free TV streaming to the PC for its subscribers. According to some estimates, France has fallen behind UK in the broadband subscriber numbers.
Official data
The most up-to-date official information on broadband (BB) Internet is on the French Telecom regulator's (ARCEP, formerly ART) page at:
http://www.art-telecom.fr/dossiers/internet/internet.htm.
More precise numbers on BB Internet can be found here:
http://www.art-telecom.fr/observatoire/haut-debit/index-htdebit0106.htm
| end of quarter | Q3 2004 | Q4 2004 | Q1 2005 | Q2 2005 | *Q3 2005 |
Q4 2005 | Q1 2006 | Q2 2006 |
| Broadband subscribers | 5 497 695 | 6 529 876 | 7 383 000 | 7 893 128 | 8 483 656 | 9 465 600 | 10 506 800 | 11 105 000 |
| ADSL | 5 061 779 | 6 072 723 | 6 900 000 | 7 368 744 | 7 948 451 | 8 900 000 | 9 900 000 | 10 470 000 |
| Cable | 432 500 | 454 035 | 480 000 | 519 400 | 530 000 | 560 000 | 600 000 | 630 000 |
| Other (radio, fiber...) | 3 416 | 3 118 | 3 000 | 4 984 | 5 205 | 5 886 | 4 976 | 5000 |
In a nutshell, in Q4 2005, France had about 9,5m BB internet Subs , up roughly 2,9m in one year, a 44,1% year on year increase. ADSL represents about 94% of BB accees with 8,9m Subs. Out of the 8.9m DSL lines, 2,82m lines were unbundled lines at the end of 2005, including 0,6m lines totally unbundled (no subscription paid by the end consumer to France Telecom).
General data on the Internet market can be found here:
http://www.arcep.fr/index.php?id=8990
Fixed Operators
(work in progress)
Note: 1) France markets Internet access speeds with ATM speeds, not IP speeds, so you need to take off about 20% of all indicated speeds. Example: a 20 Mb/s ADSL 2+ connection, is really a 16Mb/s. 2) internet speeds depend on the distance between the modem and the DSLAM (up to 3,5km): after about 1km, speeds starts to come down rapidly
- Wanadoo France (France Telecom Group) (ADSL up to 18Mb/s starting at 29,90€/month)
- Free (Iliad Group) (ADSL up to 20Mb/s + VoIP + 100 TVs... for 29,99€/month)
- Neuf (LDCom group) (ADSL up to 20Mb/s + VoIP for 29,90€/month) + Cegetel (they just merged) (ADSL 14,90€/month up to 20Mb/s + 10€/month for VoIP)
- Alice (ADSL + VoIP up to 20Mb/s, for 29,95€/month) (htey bought the assets of Tiscali France, now part of Telecom Italia)
- AOL France (AOL Inc., TimeWarner) (ADSL up to 18 Mb/s for 29,90€/month + VoIP)
- Club-Internet (Deutsche Telecom Group) (ADSL up to 20Mb/s + VoIP for 19,90€/month).
- Tele2 France (up to 16Mb/s of 14,85€/month, VoIP not included)
There's a nice comparison table of prices here, on Club-Internet's page.
A great page on ISPs on the leading Internet news portal (Journal du Net or JdN) in France is available here, where there is also a quality of service benchmark published every month.
Ixis Securities published in february 2006 an estimate of the market shares of DSL providers:
| rank | ISP | Subs Q1 2005 | * marketshare* |
| 1 | Wanadoo | 4.290.000 | 48.2 % |
| 2 | Free | 1.550.000 | 17.4% |
| 3 | Neuf Cegetel | 1.148.000 | 12.9% |
| 4 | AOL | 560.000 | 6.3% |
| 5 | Tiscali / Alice | 516.000 | 5.8% |
| 6 | Tele2 | 516.000 | 5.8% |
| 7 | Club-Internet | 294.000 | 3.3% |
For more information, please contact Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz on http://sepulveda.net.
Mobile Operators
(work in progress)
- Orange France: Edge, UMTS R99,(WAP, visio: billing per minute, Data Card : unlimited aceess for 70€ w VAT) HDxPA in progress.
- SFR (Vodafone Groupe) : Edge, UMTS R99,(wap, visio : billing on a minute basis) HSxPA in progress
- Bouygues Telecom : Edge (unlimited access on i-mode for 9,99€- DataCard for 50€without VAT corporate offer), HSxPA announced in may 2007