MuniWireless

ARCEP, the French regulator (equivalent to the FCC in the US) released a report which revealed that the number of fixed broadband access lines reached 16.7 million households in the country, up 18% from last year. In the last quarter, only 450,000 new subscribers were registered: “This confirms a slight slowdown in growth since the third quarter of 2006,” said the press release. The growth rate year-to-year was 25 % in early 2007.

ADSL access is dominant in the French market with 15,875,000 subscribers compared to the 950,000 cable subscribers who are customers of Numericable, the only cable operator in France.

In France, a significant portion of the broadband market consists of many competitive DSL providers who buy access from France Télécom on a wholesale regulated price. About 8,030,000 access lines, or 66% of the DSL market, are bought on the wholesale market.

ARCEP also mentions that unbundling is still growing in France with 4.2 million lines being fully unbundled. Unbundled access means the central office has been opened by France Télécom to at least one competitive operator offering ADSL to customers in the area (in competition with France Telecom’s own DSL offering). Fully unbundled access allows the subscriber to get rid of the France Telecom phone line and use VoIP services for fixed voice calls.

The unbundling movement in France developed through local communities’ initiatives beginning in 2004. At that time, the French Parliament required France Telecom to open its local loop (the last mile between the central office and the subscriber) to competitive operators and authorized the local communities to finance and develop their own backbone networks to unbundle France Télécom’s central offices in their territories, facilitating competition on the broadband access market. Today, 3421 France Telecom central offices have been open to a competitive operator and most of the 12,000 central offices in France have been equipped for DSL access by France Télecom. The unbundling has resulted in the popularity of triple play services in France, allowing the subscribers to get TV (50 to 80 channels), unlimited fixed phone (VoIP) to France and  to 20 to 30 countries, and high speed Internet access (6 to 20 mbps) for a flat fee of 30 to 40 Euros a month depending on the operator.