Internet in France has been available to the general public since 1994, but widespread Internet use did not take off until the mid-2000s. As of 31 December 2014, France had 26 million Internet broadband and high-speed connections on fixed networks. In 2014, 80.7% of French households (22.5 million households) had Internet access (47 million users in January 2015, according to Médiamétrie), while 19.3% did not (5.4 million households, out of a total of 27.8 million households). In 2014, 82% of French people aged 12 and over had Internet access at home (even though only 77% used it), and 64% of French people aged 12 years and older connected daily to the Internet from home. Considering all connections locations (not only the home), 83% of French people were Internet users. In metropolitan

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, intense competition between

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

s has led to the introduction of moderately-priced high speed

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

up to 28 Mbit/s ( ATM),

VDSL2 Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber lin ...

up to 100 Mbit/s, and

FTTX Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic ...

up to 1 Gbit/s from €26 per month. They often include other services such as unlimited free

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...

communications to land lines, and

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...

Dial-up internet access Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

is considered outdated. Since around 2003, quotas have been seen as outdated and consequently all the fixed broadband internet offers in France are unmetered.

History

The PTT pioneered the

virtual circuit A virtual circuit (VC) is a means of transporting data over a data network, based on packet switching and in which a connection is first established across the network between two endpoints. The network, rather than having a fixed data rate reser ...

variant of

packet switching In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping Data (computing), data into short messages in fixed format, i.e. ''network packet, packets,'' that are transmitted over a digital Telecommunications network, network. Packets consi ...

beginning in 1971 through the work of

Rémi Després Rémi Després (born January 16, 1943) is a French engineer and entrepreneur known for his contributions on data networking. Education In 1961–1963, Rémi Després attended École Polytechnique of Paris, of which he holds an Engineer degree ...

at CNET. Després demonstrated the technology on the experimental RCP network. Virtual circuits became part of the

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for Packet switched network, packet-switched data communication in wide area network, wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the CCITT, International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Co ...

standard used on Transpac and public data networks worldwide. Many public networks later switched to the Internet protocol suite and became part of the Internet. The

CYCLADES The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate i ...

research project was directed by

Louis Pouzin Louis Pouzin (born 20 April 1931) is a French computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He directed the development of the CYCLADES computer network in France the early 1970s, which implemented a novel design for packet communication. He was the ...

at the IRIA (later, INRIA) beginning in 1972. The

Internet protocol suite The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

(TCP/IP) incorporates concepts first implemented in this network. Public dialup information, messaging and e-commerce services, were pioneered through

Minitel The Minitel, officially known as TELETEL, was an interactive videotex online service accessible through telephone lines. It was the world's first and most successful mass-market online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was developed in Ces ...

, launched in 1982, which provided

videotex Videotex (or interactive videotex) was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typi ...

, information and services, for users in their homes. Minitel was the world's most successful online service prior to the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. FNET, the French branch of EUnet, converted from UUCP to TCP/IP in 1986. During the summer of 1988, the INRIA connected its

Sophia-Antipolis Sophia Antipolis is a 2,400 hectare science park, technology park in southeast France, and as of 2021 home to 2,500 companies, valued today at more than 5.6 billion euros and employing more than 38,000 people counting more than 80 nationalities. ...

unit to the

NSFNet The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The ...

via Princeton using a satellite link leased to France Telecom and MCI. The link became operational on 8 August 1988, and allowed INRIA researchers to access the US network and allowed

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

researchers access to an astronomical database based in Strasbourg. This was the first international connection to NSFNET and the first time that French networks were connected directly to a network using TCP/IP, the Internet protocol. In 1992, almost simultaneously, French Data Network and Altern (via the Minitel service 3616 ALTERN) enabled the general public to connect to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. Access to the

did not yet exist at the time and the services offered were

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

, the news of the

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

network, access to many software archives documentation, and access to Internet network machines. RENATER was the first network for research and higher education in France to use the Internet protocol suite in 1993. Initially, the Internet was only available to a small number of users in a few companies and universities. AOL was a success in France between 1996 and 2000 through its widely-distributed free CDs, with attractive prices for low speeds. The general public began to have access to Internet starting from 1994. The first real public

(ISP) was WorldNet which opened in February 1994 at the Computer Associates Expo. FranceNet, founded by Rafi Haladjian, launched its service in June 1994. These were followed by order Calvacom, Internet Way and Imaginet. Internet access became widespread in the early 2000s with the emergence of

. In 2007, Free was one of the first ISPs in the world to deploy

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

service using the 6rd mechanism invented by Rémi Després.

Lines

On 3 December 2008, France had 16.3 million

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

connections, of which 94% are

subscribers. This makes France the second largest ADSL market in Europe. At the end of 2005, 30% of those DSL lines were unbundled, and 37% of those unbundled lines were totally unbundled without any direct invoicing of the historical operator and a greater progression rate than partial unbundling. At the end of September 2005, more than 95% of the population can have a DSL connection, albeit some of them only 512/128.

"Zones Blanches" in France

An estimated households in rural areas are unable to be reached for ADSL connection, and must access Internet through other means, such

Satellite Internet Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through communication satellites; if it can sustain high speeds, it is termed satellite broadband. Modern consumer grade satellite Internet service is typically provided to individual use ...

. To reduce the

digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to information technology, digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information ...

, many departments have chosen either to subsidize Internet access via satellite, or to deploy radio networks, such as

WiMax Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMA ...

. The French state has also chosen to subsidize some private operators to enable them to deploy fiber optics throughout the country.

Domain Names in France

The AFNIC is responsible for domain names in

, including .fr (France and the island of

Réunion Réunion (; ; ; known as before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately east of the isl ...

) and .pm (for

Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Pierre and Miquelon ( ), officially the Territorial Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (), is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, located near the Canada, Canadian prov ...

). Other domain names exist, such as .gf for

French Guiana French Guiana, or Guyane in French, is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France located on the northern coast of South America in the Guianas and the West Indies. Bordered by Suriname to the west ...

, .nc for

New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...

, .mq for

Martinique Martinique ( ; or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was previously known as Iguanacaera which translates to iguana island in Carib language, Kariʼn ...

, .yt for

Mayotte Mayotte ( ; , ; , ; , ), officially the Department of Mayotte (), is an Overseas France, overseas Overseas departments and regions of France, department and region and single territorial collectivity of France. It is one of the Overseas departm ...

, .pf for

French Polynesia French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole #Governance, overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. The t ...

, .gp for

Guadeloupe Guadeloupe is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre Island, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Guadeloupe, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galant ...

, .tf for

French Southern and Antarctic Lands The French Southern and Antarctic Lands (, TAAF) is an overseas territory ( or ) of France. It consists of: * Adélie Land (), the French claim on the continent of Antarctica. * Crozet Islands (), a group in the southern Indian Ocean, south ...

or .eu for the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

ADSL market

Consumer access to digital networks started in France earlier than in other countries with the

, a pre-World Wide Web online service invented by the PTT ( Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones). In May 1998, the number of French households connected to the Internet was an estimated (or 2.4% of French households), compared to in May 1997 and in May 1996. In June 2009

occupied the third place in the number of households in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an connected to

, behind Germany and the United Kingdom. France seeks to reach universal broadband coverage by 2017.

ADSL Market Actors

Of 25 million subscribers, the major Internet service providers (ISPs) in France are: * Orange 40% market share, or 10.354 million subscribers as of 31 December 2014. * Free (group

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...

) (also including

Alice Alice may refer to: * Alice (name), most often a feminine given name, but also used as a surname Literature * Alice (''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''), a character in books by Lewis Carroll * ''Alice'' series, children's and teen books by ...

): 5.868 million subscribers. * SFR - Numericable: 6.577 million subscribers. * Bouygues Telecom (group

Bouygues Bouygues S.A. () is a French engineering group headquartered in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. Bouygues is listed on the Euronext, Euronext Paris exchange and is a blue chip (stock market), blue chip in the ...

): 2.428 million subscribers. * Other (Alsatis NordNet, OVH Telecom, Prixtel, Budget Telecom, Coriolis Telecom, Vivéole (now Bigblu), FDN, Nerim, ... Magic OnLine): 6.57% or 1.27 million subscribers. The legal context in France allows associations to form themselves into non-profit ISP. There are well over a dozen such ISPs associations in France, the main one being the French Data Network and a federation of associative internet providers, the Federation FDN.

ADSL offers

The market is oriented towards stopping the price war, and offering more services at a price going from €20 to €38: * maximum throughput permitted by the line, either 24 Mbit/s (maximum of ADSL2+), 28 Mbit/s (

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

non-standard ADSL2+ deployed on Free network) or 100 Mbit/s (maximum of

profile 17a) depending on the line length and type of

DSLAM A digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM, often pronounced ''DEE-slam'') is a network device, often located in telephone exchanges, that connects multiple customer digital subscriber line (DSL) interfaces to a high-speed digital co ...

. * unlimited telephony to land lines in Europe, North America (even mobile phones), and a few dozens of other countries. * television with the broadcasting of the young terrestrial digital TV and paid satellite TV. Those

triple play In baseball or softball, a triple play (denoted as TP in baseball statistics) is the act of making three out (baseball), outs during the same play. There have only been 739 triple plays in Major League Baseball (MLB) since 1876, an average of ju ...

offers were initiated by Free with the

Freebox The Freebox is an Asymmetric digital subscriber line, ADSL-VDSL-FTTH modem and a set-top box that the French Internet service provider named Free (ISP), Free (part of the Iliad group) provides to its DSL-FTTH subscribers. Its main use is as a hi ...

modem, and are expanding to all major players, driving the French market. Bouygues Telecom lowered the first price of standard triple-play offers to €20 in February 2015. Those prices are being attained with complete unbundling, saving the monthly €15 for the POTS subscription while retaining the triple play services. Those offers of naked DSL are also available in non-unbundled areas, and can lead to the economy of the traditional telephone subscription.

ADSL technology

After selling the first ADSL2+ offers in Europe, providing a speed of 18 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up in 2004, French operators continue to offer new services, driven by the competition. It is possible to use

videotelephony Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films Digital distribution, digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typica ...

, Reach Extended ADSL for 8 km lines soon. Experiments are not any more the

/ Free trademark: they recently demonstrated an aggregated 174 Mbit/s link, while

Telecom Italia TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.) is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples (with the Telecom Italia Tower), which provides fixed, public and mobile telephony, and DSL data services. It is ...

innovates on the service with a free hotline and Orange is pushing

VDSL Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber li ...

. In December 2005, Free enabled a TV multicasting service on the customer's local network, an open solution based on RTSP. This completes the media center capability of the freebox, also using the

VideoLAN VideoLAN is a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization which software development, develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two computer program, programs for media streaming media, streaming, ...

project. They launched in April 2006 a new Freebox divided in two devices with

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Fe ...

and

HDTV High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it ref ...

capabilities and a

Mimo In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) () is a method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmission and receiving antennas to exploit multipath propagation. MIMO has become an essential element of wirel ...

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

network. Quadruple play, triple play with mobile communications, is available. Around 2007, fixed broadband operators experimented dual mode mobile offers, such as Neuf Cegetel selling for €200 and €1 along with its Twin plan, a GSM/WiFi hybrid telephone after the experimenta
beautifulphone
by the means of a QTek 8300 and Wanadoo selling Unik, a Motorola, Nokia or Samsung handset for €100. These offers have not been widely taken up by consumers and ceased operating a few years later.

Other Technologies

France has seen the development of other types of networks applications, such as Sigfox's "ultra narrow band" radio network, covering of up to 80% of the country in 2012. Bosch, and other companies such as

Ericsson (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

and

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

have created similar connective applications, with Bosch having sold over 50 thousand networked heating systems in the country as of 2015. Sigfox and French companies, SYSMECA and

Airbus Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...

, are partnering to embark on the “MUSTANG Project”, a drive to offer both earth- and satellite-based

Machine to Machine Machine to machine (M2M) is direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired communication, wired and wireless. Machine to machine communication can include industrial instrumentation, enabling a sensor or met ...

communication worldwide. They are partly publicly funded, with the French Future Investments Programme, through the Agence Nationale de la Recherche.

Anti-piracy law

In May 2009, a bill was approved by the

French National Assembly The National Assembly (, ) is the lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral French Parliament under the French Fifth Republic, Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (France), Senate (). The National Assembly's legislators are known ...

to prevent

internet piracy Online piracy or software piracy is the practice of downloading and distributing copyrighted works digitally without permission, such as music, movies or software. History Nathan Fisk traces the origins of modern online piracy back to similar ...

. After being caught at downloading illegal files three times, a user's connection might be suspended. It only targets open

peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program th ...

networks.

References

{{Internet in Europe History of computing in France