Hôtel de Roquelaure, on Boulevard St. Germain in Paris, is an elegant 18th century residence close to the Musée d’Orsay, an unlikely location to celebrate a 21st century achievement: the establishment of near 100% cellular coverage in France. But perhaps that is not so surprising given that it is the headquarters of the French Ministry for Town and Country Planning, headed by Hubert Falco, a member of the Sarkozy government. It was here that the three largest French cellular operators (Bouygues, SFR and Orange), the telecom regulator ARCEP and the Association of French Mayors (AMF), came together to memorialize a new agreement whose goal is to eradicate cellular dead spots in 364 municipalities, bringing cell phone coverage in France to 99.3% of the population by 2011.
“In July 2003,” said Falco, “we signed an innovative agreement with the three operators to bring cellular coverage to 3000 municipalities in France that were not reachable on any cell phone network.” The Government set aside a budget of €44 million to leverage the investments of the operators and provide tax breaks to municipalities hosting the cell sites. At the end of 2007, 90% of the cell sites were deployed with a total investment of €450 million from the operators. But 364 municipalities remained without coverage.
Reaching 99.3% coverage by 2011
Frank Esser, CEO of SFR, gave an overview of the collaborative work between the three operators and the municipalities to install cell sites, and eventually share them, once the dead spots had been identified. “We share 65% of the newly installed sites. This means one operator builds the site with the municipality and carries the signal for the other operators. This doesn’t cover data access because we are speaking only of 2G.” Emmanuel Forest, Deputy General Manager at Bouygues Telecom mentioned that based on data from Hutchison in the UK, this kind of sharing has allowed the operators there to reach 40% of the population. He agreed with Frank Esser about the length and complexity of the procedures to get authorizations for building a site on municipal land, adding: “All the mayors want cell phone coverage in their territory, but few of them want cell sites . . . It’s a real problem.” To get the new agreement into place to cover the remaining 364 municipalities in France, the Government allocated €7 million euros and the telecom operators put in €10 million. “By the end 2011, we will have only 0.5% of the population unreachable by cell phone,” Falco said.
Reusing old 2G frequencies for 3G
Paul Champsaur, president of ARCEP, the French telecom regulator, applauded the deal and added that 2G coverage is showing significant improvement in France. A law passed last August by the French Parliament requires operators to publish annually the locations of the sites they have built and the sites they plan to build in the coming year. “This transparency was needed,” said Champsaur, “not only to find out where there are still dead spots, but to improve coverage where it remains unsatisfactory.” French operators are now moving to 3G with 70% of coverage. ARCEP has allowed the operators that own frequency for 2G (in the 900Mhz) to reallocate these frequencies to their new 3G infrastructure. “Today, this move is unique in Europe and it gives great flexibility to the French operators. It allows them to increase and improve coverage at a lower cost,” Champsaur said. For SFR, the only issue now is the lack of 3G handsets that use this frequency. Original 3G frequencies are in the 2GHz band.
Infrastructure sharing
But for Champsaur, one of the important consequences of his actions as a regulator is the sharing of infrastructure among the operators. “Infrastructure sharing has long been permitted under the European regulatory framework,” he said, “but it has never been used. This deal shows that it is possible, and ARCEP will soon open a consultation on how to organize and implement infrastructure sharing (wireless and fixed) in the French telecommunications market. The results of the consultation will determine the operational conditions that will be put in place.” Indeed, he mentioned that the European Commission is working on allowing 2.6 GHz frequencies to be used for high speed mobile Internet along with the digital dividend (in the 700 MHz bands). This means WiMax in Europe will be allowed to operate in these frequency bands.
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