Arcep publishes preliminary data on 4Q broadband market growth

As at 31 December 2009 France was home to a total of 19.69 million broadband and ultra high speed broadband subscribers, the national regulator Arcep says in its preliminary market review. The watchdog’s findings show that the total number of subscriptions increased by 540,000 during the fourth quarter, while the yearly increase was around 1.87 million, or 10% per annum. Of the full total reported at end-2009, 19.40 million were classed as broadband subscriptions, including 18.50 million connections – 95% of the total – up 470,000 quarter-on-quarter. Meanwhile, the number of ultra high speed broadband subscriptions was estimated at 290,000 by end-2009, including 70,000 FTTx (mainly fibre-to-the-home) and 220,000 were very high speed broadband access with fibre-optci cable terminated with coaxial. Under the watchdog’s classification system ultra-high speed subscriptions are those whose peak download speed is more than 50Mbps and the peak upload rate is greater than 5Mbps.