Back in December the French president pushed the idea of 100 Mbps broadband to every French home over the next decade, and talked about spending €7 billion to get the job done.
The idea was to raise most of it through a bond issue, which would then be spent in the form of repayable loans. Well, he has already made good on part of that plan, by pledging €2 billion in soft loans made by the government.
The French government will make a series of low-interest loans to telecommunications groups, to encourage them to develop fiber optic networks outside major cities. The Wall Street Journal reported Prime Minister Francois Fillon saying, ‘We are at the dawn of the era of high-speed Internet and fiber-optic networks. However, 500,000 French people don’t have access to high speed Internet at all. This is not acceptable
The French market for telecommunications is pretty competitive by US or UK standards, with four mobile licenses, and at least three credible triple play fixed line operators, most of which are already deploying fiber, but so far it has been limited to major cites, especially Paris and it is questionable whether companies like Free (owned by Iliad) or SFR will be able to focus outside those areas, even with Government loans.
So instead, the idea is to get the major players, including France telecom, to share the cost of building fiber in more rural areas rather than duplicate the effort. Free, SFR and France Telecom already have a trial of just how they would share access to a fiber network.
This is a far cry from the €7 billion that President Nicolas Sarkozy has talked about, but perhaps the €2 billion is to prove the concept and then industry and the banks (which the French government have so recently bailed out), will follow suit.
Additionally satellite access will be required to bring broadband to the most remote areas of France and funding for this may be separate.
In the US idea of a national broadband plan has been mooted several times, but the FCC has delayed the publishing of its national broadband plan and most wonder just what the average bandwidth minimum to each home is going to be ‘ perhaps as little as 1Mbps or 2Mbps.
Back in October that was exactly what Italy signed up for with the Government agreeing to spend €800 million to bring broadband cheaply to every Italian Citizen.