Telecom panorama in France

ARCEP, the French regulator agency, has unveiled some interesting figures on the French telecom market. The global market was worth some €10.4bn in 4Q05, of which 80% from fixed telephony, mobile services and Internet. These three segments grew about 5% in the quarter. FT lost 1m PSTN fixed line users in 2005 (-2.8%) to a total of 39.9m, while the number of fixed telephone subscriptions rose 4.2% during 2005, to reach 36.4m. There were 2.8m (+86%) unbundled lines in France at the end of 2005, of which 592k were fully unbundled. There were 3.3m (+254%) VoIP subscribers and 69k (+100%) cable telephony users in France at the end of 2005. VOIP accounted for 11% of the traffic (vs 6% in 1Q05). France had 9.5m broadband subscribers at the end of 2005, of which 94% are ADSL and 6% are cable subscribers. On the mobile side, penetration reached 80% or a subscriber base of 48m users (+8%). Mobile services accounted for €4.1bn, or about 40% of the total telecom revenues.

The market is healthy, more and more competitive with a broad range of offerings, with low-cost triple play services (as low as € 29 per month for triple play services). The local incumbent, France Telecom, is the market leader in fixed, mobile and internet markets, but its position is gradually eroding under strong competitive pressure.