France has the third largest telecoms market in Europe and in Orange it hosts one of the world’s major telcos, with interests in markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The company recently embarked on its five-year ‘Essentials 2020’ program focused on emerging markets as well as on investments in super-fast broadband and LTE infrastructure within its European footprint.

Despite market liberalization, the company still dominates all telecom sectors in France, though increasing competition from a number of major players (notably Numéricable-SFR and Iliad) has gradually eroded this lead, prompting it to respond with a range of innovative offers and wide-ranging strategies to meet future customer needs.

Growth in the broadband sector in recent years has been bolstered by demand for high bandwidth applications, considerable investment in fibre infrastructure among telcos and regional governments, and a pro-competitive regulator which has promoted access to Orange’s DSL network for new entrants through local loop unbundling. Recent legislation has secured similar access for fibre infrastructure. DSL still dominates the broadband market in terms of access lines, though fibre deployments have grown substantially in recent years and will continue to do so into 2016, slowly eroding the DSL customer base.

France has successfully completed its migration process to all-HD (MPEG-4) digital terrestrial signal (DTT) transmission on 5 April. The move will progressively vacate 2×30MHz of 700MHz spectrum – the so-called ‘second digital dividend’ – for ultra-high speed broadband services between April 2016 and June 2019. The National Agency of Frequencies (ANFR) revealed that as of 1 April 2016 Bouygues Telecom has already installed its first three 700MHz antennas in Paris, while Free Mobile built three base transceiver stations (BTS) in Tarbes. From 6 April 2016, cellcos will be authorised to provide services in the 700MHz band in a total of 2,374 communes.
All four of the country’s mobile network operators (Orange, Bouygues, Numericable-SFR and Free Mobile) secured 700MHz spectrum in the auction held by the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Posts (Autorite de Regulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes, Arcep) in late October 2015. The regulator revealed that the price of the six 5MHz blocks on offer reached EUR466 million (USD528.8 million) apiece, with Orange France and Free Mobile securing two blocks each in the aforementioned band, while Bouygues Telecom and Numericable-SFR walked away with one each.

European telecom stocks have stumbled after a deal to create France’s biggest telecoms group collapsed. French operators Orange and Bouygues Telecom ended talks late on April 2016 over the reported €10bn (£8bn) merger. Bouygues shares are on course for their worst fall in 17 years, plunging nearly 15.2% in midday trading, while Orange shares were down 4.4%. The news initially sent BT shares down 1.1% and Vodafone down 0.5%, although they later recovered those losses. The potential merger of Orange with its smaller rival Bouygues was intended to prop up profits and would have reduced the number of mobile operators from four to three in France. Analysts at Deutsche Bank said Orange had set clear conditions that were not met during talks, while Bouygues identified four reasons for the failure, including execution risk and governance.

French telecoms regulator the Authority of Regulation for Electronic Communications and Posts (Autorite de Regulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes, Arcep) has offered interested parties the opportunity to stage tests using the 2570MHz-2620MHz (2.6GHz) and 3400MHz-3600MHz (3.5GHz) bands, ahead of the spectrum’s planned distribution – which will occur within the next two years. Arcep says the frequencies are suitable for wireless in the local loop (WiLL, 3.5GHz) and time division LTE (TD-LTE, 2.6GHz) usage, but can also be used to support the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) sector.

Key developments:

– France migrates to HD DTT to vacate 700MHz band for broadband services.
– Arcep likely to distribute 2.6GHz, 3.5GHz spectrum by end-2017.
– Regulator consults on revised guidelines for mobile network sharing;
– RED Technologies pilots Licensed Shared Access using 2.3GHz spectrum;
– Digital Republic bill to provide the telecom regulator with authority to oversee net neutrality and open internet access;
– Bouygues Telecom sets up Objenious subsidiary dedicated to the Internet of Things;
– Bouygues Telecom and Orange enter acquisition talks;
– Videostreaming viewing shows 11.5% increase in 2015;
– Netflix signs up some 900,000 subscribers by end-2015;
– Vivendi acquires 80% stake in Dailymotion from Orange;
– Orange sets out five-year Essentials 2020 strategy;
– Telecom sector investment recovers from 2009 downturn;
– Numéricable-SFR launches an 800Mb/s FttP service;