How national infrastructure is avoiding “digital fractures” 

In 2015, 77.6% of the French pop­u­la­tion was still not con­nec­ted to a broad­band tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions net­work at home. Against this tech­no­lo­gic­al and social back­drop, object­ives were set in 2013 to provide all of France with high-speed broad­band con­nectiv­ity – more than 30Mbit/s – by 2022. The aim was to encour­age private invest­ment to ensure cov­er­age of the entire coun­try – 43 mil­lion homes – while using pub­lic funds to fin­ance areas where mar­ket short­com­ings had been iden­ti­fied. To meet this ambi­tion, almost 13 bil­lion euros of pub­lic invest­ment were planned and noti­fied to the European Com­mis­sion in 2016.

At the end of the eval­u­ation work car­ried out by France Straté­gie, it was found that the France Très Haut Débit Plan (PFTHD)¹ had been a suc­cess. By 2022, the ini­tial cov­er­age object­ives have been achieved, with almost 100% of premises (99.2%) eli­gible for high-speed broad­band, des­pite cer­tain inequal­it­ies between regions and some dif­fi­culties in con­nect­ing final users. Tech­no­lo­gic­ally neut­ral, the Plan has relied on wire­line and wire­less tech­no­lo­gies that are best suited to the spe­cificit­ies of each region. How­ever, it has pro­gress­ively broadened its object­ives by pri­or­it­ising the install­a­tion of fibre broad­band in the home by 2025, the most effi­cient option cap­able of offer­ing much high­er speeds, in the order of hun­dreds of Mbits/s.

Anoth­er indic­a­tion of the Plan’s suc­cess is its abil­ity to tar­get the same object­ives in all regions, without dis­tinc­tion (dense or rur­al areas, met­ro­pol­it­an or over­seas ter­rit­or­ies). France has thus become one of Europe’s best examples in terms of the deploy­ment of fibre, where­as a dec­ade ago it was ranked at the bot­tom. It should also be noted that this rap­id imple­ment­a­tion of a new nation­al infra­struc­ture was car­ried out while adjust­ing to each region’s spe­cif­ic require­ments and con­trolling expendit­ure, which remained in line with the reg­u­lat­or’s cost estim­ates and did not exceed the budget.

This suc­cess­ful imple­ment­a­tion of the PFTHD was made pos­sible by the struc­tur­ing of an effi­cient indus­tri­al sec­tor, from the man­u­fac­ture of cables to their install­a­tion in homes, rep­res­ent­ing a total of more than 40,000 jobs. By allow­ing the arrival of new play­ers, and by rein­for­cing the expert­ise of private oper­at­ors and loc­al author­it­ies who are poten­tially fully in con­trol of their net­work, the exist­ence of such a sec­tor has been essen­tial for the deploy­ment, but it will be just as essen­tial in the future to ensure the main­ten­ance and resi­li­ence of the networks. 

Echo­ing the massive rol­louts, the adop­tion of fibre broad­band is largely on track for private cus­tom­ers, who account for 79% of the total num­ber of high-speed broad­band sub­scrip­tions. Out of 31.5 mil­lion Inter­net sub­scribers, 18.4 mil­lion French people sub­scribe to a high-speed broad­band offer, includ­ing 14.5 mil­lion to fibre – which amounts to 46% of the total num­ber of Inter­net sub­scribers. In con­trast, the level of adop­tion by busi­nesses is still low – even if there is an upward trend in fibre sub­scrip­tions. Only 50% of busi­nesses were sub­scrib­ing to high-speed broad­band in 2022, accord­ing to the industry’s fig­ures. Faced with the speed of deploy­ment and cov­er­age, the trans­form­a­tion of uses and prac­tices thus seems less rap­id and less profound. 

But cov­er­age and adop­tion are not everything. The import­ance of high-speed broad­band lies first and fore­most in its expec­ted impact. In this respect, the indir­ect effects of the Plan are already vis­ible, even if, at the cur­rent early stage of deploy­ment, they are still only weak indic­at­ors. But we can already observe that the arrival of high-speed broad­band or fibre is accom­pan­ied by the main­ten­ance and rein­force­ment of the appeal of all the regions: increase in the num­ber of com­pan­ies, increase in the added value or employ­ment gen­er­ated by the com­mer­cial sec­tor, arrival of young­er pop­u­la­tions and great­er resi­li­ence dur­ing confinements.

Bey­ond these res­ults, how­ever, qual­ity, net­work main­ten­ance and effect­ive access remain a cause for con­cern. Indeed, the coun­ter­part of suc­cess in terms of cov­er­age has been the pri­or­ity giv­en by all con­cerned to the speed of deploy­ment. This has res­ul­ted in a wide­spread out­sourcing of field oper­a­tions, lead­ing to many oper­at­ors and sub­con­tract­ors, without always hav­ing suf­fi­cient con­trol over the qual­ity of the ser­vices provided.

In order to achieve rap­id deploy­ment, there has been wide­spread out­sourcing of field oper­a­tions without always hav­ing suf­fi­cient con­trol over the qual­ity of the ser­vices provided.

The Plan has made it pos­sible to organ­ise the ini­tial invest­ments for the con­struc­tion of infra­struc­tures. But these infra­struc­tures will have to be adap­ted to meet new uses and demo­graph­ic changes. The fund­ing envis­aged for the moment for “routine” main­ten­ance will not be enough. Future fin­an­cing will have to be envis­aged to ensure their tech­no­lo­gic­al upgrad­ing, their adapt­ab­il­ity to ter­rit­ori­al trans­form­a­tions and the con­di­tions of net­work sustainability. 

The chal­lenge today is there­fore to ensure the qual­ity and resi­li­ence of the infra­struc­tures. This means secur­ing the final con­nec­tions, ensur­ing the high-speed broad­band con­nectiv­ity of the end premises – the most dif­fi­cult and costly to cov­er – guar­an­tee­ing the main­ten­ance and avail­ab­il­ity of the deployed net­works, and ensur­ing their resi­li­ence in the face of cli­mate and energy crises or cyberattacks.

The cur­rent chal­lenge is there­fore no longer just to final­ise what remains to be done with the last con­nec­tions, but also to retain and devel­op the skills acquired to anti­cip­ate and plan for the future. Provid­ing an infra­struc­ture is not enough. In addi­tion to the eco­nom­ic effects that are begin­ning to be meas­ured, the eval­u­ation also emphas­ises the need to think in terms of stim­u­lat­ing uses and stim­u­lat­ing an applic­a­tion eco­sys­tem. As one of our pan­el­lists said: “The adven­ture does not end when the con­nec­tion is made, it has only just begun”.

These ques­tions of how to anti­cip­ate the post-Plan peri­od are being asked by all con­cerned. The role of the loc­al author­it­ies has been cent­ral to the suc­cess of the Plan, in par­tic­u­lar thanks to the strong fin­an­cial invest­ments made to ensure that their staff become more qual­i­fied. They have cre­ated spe­cif­ic struc­tures to devel­op expert­ise, pool resources and cooper­ate between regions: their role must now change from pro­ject lead­ers to eco­sys­tem facil­it­at­ors. For man­u­fac­tur­ers, it is a ques­tion of anti­cip­at­ing the end of deploy­ment by ensur­ing the con­di­tions for the reor­gan­isa­tion of their activ­it­ies in France and for inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment, to enable jobs to be main­tained and employ­ees to be retrained in oth­er digit­al tech­no­logy areas. For the State and pub­lic play­ers, the con­di­tions of gov­ernance and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the com­mit­ment to the future of high-speed net­works will also be raised, and even the ques­tion of their pub­lic own­er­ship in the light of sov­er­eignty issues.

The alli­ance between loc­al author­it­ies, the State and private oper­at­ors with­in the frame­work of a nation­al scheme has been par­tic­u­larly effective.

The col­lect­ive suc­cess of the Plan was due to the adapt­ab­il­ity of the rela­tions between pub­lic and private act­ors and the reg­u­lat­ory frame­work: it made it pos­sible to face a tech­no­lo­gic­al, leg­al, and eco­nom­ic envir­on­ment that was uncer­tain at the out­set. In this respect, the remark­able con­tinu­ity of the actions car­ried out must be emphas­ised, des­pite the polit­ic­al changes that may have occurred at loc­al or nation­al levels. This con­tinu­ity of object­ives has enabled the vari­ous act­ors to remain com­mit­ted to the pro­jects over the long term. The alli­ance between loc­al author­it­ies, the State and private oper­at­ors with­in the frame­work of a nation­al scheme has thus been par­tic­u­larly effect­ive, and in our opin­ion remains one of the most instruct­ive exper­i­ences in terms of pub­lic policy management.