The government has just announced the signing of several decrees to order the deployment of 4G in 608 additional sites in rural areas of France. Orange, Bouygues Telecom, Free and SFR will have 24 months to achieve this objective. Operators will have to pool their facilities to achieve this.
On January 27, 2022, the UFC Que-Choisir published a new study which denounced the digital divide between urban and rural areas concerning the poor quality of the 4G connection. It was argued that the speed is 40% lower in French rural areas. Faced with this overwhelming observation ten years after the launch of this generation of mobile network, the government has decided to take action.
As the Secretary of State in charge of Digital Cédric O has just announced on Twitter, the authorities have just signed new orders to order the deployment of 4G on 608 additional sites in rural areas in metropolitan France. The four main French operators, namely Orange, Bouygues Telecom, Free and SFR will have 24 months to achieve this objective fixed by the Élysée.
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608 additional 4G sites by 2024
To achieve this, the four companies will pool their infrastructures. These orders are a continuation of the New Deal Mobile signed in January 2018 between ARCEP, the government and operators to accelerate mobile coverage in the territories. Every quarter, ARCEP also highlights the state of deployments by mobile operators.
According to the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion, 3595 sites have been identified by local actors since July 2018. As Cédric O reminds us in an official press release, “each operator has the obligation to deploy 5,000 new mobile sites by 2026, at the rate of 600 to 800 sites per year”. Moreover, it is the local authorities that are responsible for “to assess the actual reality of mobile coverage in the field”. Here is the detail of where these additional 4G sites will be installed by 2024:
- 128 in the Auverge-Rhône-Alpes region
- 50 in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region
- 20 in the Brittany region
- 25 in the Centre-Val de Loire region
- 14 in Corsica
- 24 in the Hauts-de-France region
- 19 in the Ile-de-France region
- 30 in Normandy region
- 51 in the New Aquitaine region
- 31 in the Pays-de-la-Loire region
- 41 in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region
“With each new pylon put into service, the daily life of French men and women changes. While digital technology is more essential than ever for exchanging, working or even getting information and entertainment, the State is not relaxing its commitment to improving mobile coverage every day.“, concludes Cédric O in his press release.
