Sarkozy Digital Plan 2012 is ambitious, but overshadowed by financial crisis
The long awaited French Digital Plan 2012, whose launch is supposed to propel France into the 21st century, has been overshadowed by the financial crisis. French President Nicholas Sarkozy left it Eric Besson, a Minister whose responsibility is the development of the Digital Economy, to present a long list of 154 action items, at the Palais de l’Elysée, home of the French President.
Besson is one of the architects of the plan, which took many months to prepare. For Besson, the primary goal is to make France a “pioneering force in the digital revolution. Besson says that infrastructure is the key to the Digital Plan: We want to accelerate the development of high speed networks and allow 100% of the population to have access to these networks. In France, 18 million households have high speed access, therefore, 1 or 2 million are still waiting for it.”
Broadband access as a Universal Service
High speed access at 512 Kbps for less than 35 euros a month should become a universal service. An RFP could be issued in early 2009 to allocate this universal service to an operator. “Each French citizen, wherever he lives, will have a right to high speed access,” Besson said. Elaborating further on infrastructure, Besson asserts that France is “now moving to ultra broadband networks and 4 million households will be connected through FTTH access by 2012, with €10 billion of investments for the next 10 years.”
A second objective of the Digital Plan is to make it easier to produce and distribute digital content. “We are allocating the sub-band 790-862 MHz freed by the switch to Digital TV (the digital dividend) to new high speed mobile services on the Internet,” he explained. “This is an opportunity for startups and innovative companies to develop new services.” The timing of the switch to digital TV will be decided by the Prime Minister by the end of 2008 with a detailed procedure to allocate the freed frequencies in 2009. It is expected that France will be one of the first in the world to complete the transition to digital TV and allocate the unused frequencies for broadband services.
A new cellular operator?
Besson emphasized that “the allocation of all radio frequencies should be done in coordination with the other European countries. For the frequencies of the “Digital Dividend” and for the 3G frequencies in the 2.1 GHz band, which are in the process of being allocated, France will adhere to three criteria: coverage, management of the French frequency assets, and competition.
Regarding the possible entrance of a 4th operator in France, this means the band available in the 2.1 GHz may be auctioned in more than one block and allocated to those who offer better conditions to MVNOs. For months, the government and ARCEP have been working on the issue, and last year almost gave this frequency to Free-Iliad, the only contender at this time. But the three incumbents, Bouygues, Orange and SFR, opposed it and forced the government to withdraw its proposal because Free-Iliad wanted to pay the €619 million license fee over a longer period of time. Besson mentioned that the auction will not prevent a new entrant, but many think it could be an opportunity to split the band among the three major operators and require them to open them up to other participants. Therefore, a new challenger such as Bollore Telecom, could be interested as it already holds WiMax licenses almost nationwide.
A National Repository platform
On the creation of online content, Besson stated: “The Internet that France is building will respect and protect the rights to create. Christine Albanel, the Minister of Culture will explore new ways to protect content.” The French Senate will vote on Christine Albanel’s proposals called “Creation and Internet” on October 27. The plan, also known as “gradual retaliation” is very controversial in France and is supposed to be dropped in accordance a recent European Parliament vote. Besson says that a National Repository Platform for protected digital content should be set up and made accessible to all the Internet creators who want to protect their digital property. Any legal content may be watermarked on the platform by their owners and then be made available legally on the net. “Internet will not kill content creation,” said Besson.
On promoting new services, the third objective of the Digital Plan, several measures will also help create new uses for enterprises, schools and government.
Reforming Internet governance
For the fourth objective of the Digital Plan, Besson stated that “the Internet is a modern tool, but its evolution must not be managed for eternity by a California association named ICANN, put under the exclusive control of the US State Department of Commerce. It is essential to create a large collaborative dialog to create a regulation of this vital worldwide infrastructure.” He already presented such an approach at a recent conference in Nice on the Internet of things.
To clarify and improve the governance of the digital economy in France, Besson proposes to bring agencies spread among different governmental units. He agreed that content broadcasting and telecommunications are converging. Reading a quote from Nicolas Sarkozy, he said: “Christine Albanel and Eric Besson will have a mission to prepare the merger of two regulatory bodies, ARCEP which manages frequencies for the telecom industry and CSA which does the same for the broadcasting industry. Separating broadcasting from digital domain is artificial. Nothing will be done before 2012, but they will have to make proposal during 2009.” Sarkozy is opening a Pandora’s box created by the uneasy coexistence of these two organizations since ART (now ARCEP) was created when France Telecom was deregulated in 1997. One of the immediate issues to resolve the problem of exclusive partnerships, such as those between Orange and content providers. Besson said he does not want access to services to be conditioned upon access to one operator’s network.
Lukewarm reception for Digital Plan
The Digital Plan did not get a warm reception among politicians or industry because of the perceived lack of focus and clear agenda. Christian Paul, a socialist Deputy who has been heavily involved in the preparation of the Digital Plan and is part of a bipartisan commission on the Digital Dividend said, “This plan is a long catalog with no means. It recycles, in a large part, all the actions put in place for the last 10 years, but it lacks the vision of a budget priority. The government pretends that the market will deploy very high speed networks by itself.” He concludes that “the local governments will be forced to create a dynamic force and accelerate this plan.” For Didier Lombard, CEO of France Télécom: “It is now the time for the industry to invest.”
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