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France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

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Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#91

Post by robin_reala »

piva00 wrote: post #47
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a new build or overhead wiring, it's a trivial cost that is easily recouped. For buried infrastructure where the coaxial cable company already sells internet, you will almost never recoup your investment to bury new fiber and run it to all the homes. You can have the superior product, but insufficient people will pay enough more than the existing coaxial cable prices.

Sweden pushed for FttH even though all outdated cabling was already buried, no idea why just a city like SF cannot do the same. Probably a main difference is that the Swedish infrastructure was deployed by municipalities with an open access model, so no need for 10 different ISPs to dig their own cabling.

I was considering a move to Skurup five or so years ago, checked to see if gigabit fibre was available and it turned out the whole town had a 10Gb symmetric stadsnät.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#92

Post by sph »

alerighi wrote: post #44
nsbk wrote: post #16

Spain is at 96.79% (June 2025), up from 94.79% a year before. See [0] I think France and Spain are the best of the big European countries regarding coverage, but also adoption: If we look at the adoption ranking globally, Spain sits fourth at 90%, behind the UAE, China and South Korea and ahead of France at 83.6%. Very few European countries convert coverage into subscriptions that efficiently, and I think it's drive…

In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered. That doesn't mean automatically that one gets fiber. First at all, if someone doesn't need to download heavy stuff and has a good coverage a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros). Second a lot of people has still FTTC even if it has FTTH, mostly because FTTC offers a speed t…

> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered

> UK is at 85% FTTH [on a sibling comment]

Meanwhile I have 1 Gb/s FTTH in an Italian village of less than 100 souls, while I couldn’t reach 300 Mbit/s on copper in London zone 4.

I have been surprised at how well they have improved the situation in Italy, and in dismay at how terrible it is in UK.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#94

Post by micromacrofoot »

dguest wrote: post #48
pbkompasz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FCC abolishes gigabit speed goal, suggesting it is unfair to Musk's Starlink

FCC: high standards are unfairly prejudicial against subpar infrastructure. > The Carr FCC said last year that the gigabit goal “may be unreasonably prejudicial to technologies such as satellite and fixed wireless that presently do not support such speeds.” I don't know if this is so much a handout to Starlink, seems like a way to win the race by moving the finish line.

it's a regulatory change that opens up fiber infrastructure money for other uses, so it certainly is another Starlink handout, in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars they've already received from taxpayers

though if we want to be fair, the competition is other telecoms that were also abusing the handouts until very recently

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#95

Post by chermi »

Are there downsides? I'm guessing it came from state initiative, does that mean more state control of the internet, including snooping and censorship? I don't know the best solution to fast and widely available internet, but I'm pretty sure the US isnt doing it. Starlink is the best for my mom's house 5 miles from a 100k+ "metro" center, which seems kind of absurd.

Who's done it best? What's wrong with the US? Just state capacity? Regulatory capture? Infrastructure incompetence, like SF? I know last mile is expensive and not super attractive from an ROI perspective, so I can see how pure market solutions might not be the best.

Im talking out of my ass but we also know the grid is fucked, and I know at least part of it is a downed tree can take out an astonishingly large sector.(1) Maybe we could bundle fiber with putting power lines underground, at least rural/suburb. Reason being that 1)digging shit up in cities is not easy -- but I also imagine we're not being creative enough there either 2) one of the most expensive parts of fiber(or any network )is last mile, on a per person basis. I would've said I was confident the biggest quality internet coverage problem was rural, but I saw that SF stat in this which kind of shocked me.

(1) I know grid is messed up in many more ways, but living in the country for big portions of my life, no electricity at all is painful and too frequent.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#96

Post by jorvi »

manacit wrote: post #82
epistasis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros). These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low. Something has gone deeply wrong with US telecommunications.

You can use any one of many MVNOs to get unlimited data for around that price, say less adjusted for household income, in the USA. A favorite of mine is https://www.usmobile.com/ which is $25/mo list price (and less if you pay for the year, or if they're having a sale) which will give you Unlimited Data and 1GB a month of global roaming data If you pay $45 you can get unlimited data from Mint for $15/mo: https://www.…

Only some places. Netherlands is €45-60 for 1 gbps (we don't make 4x-6x the money Spaniards do), unless you live in an area that actually sees multi-line competition.

We do have an interesting sidegrade: 5G Klik & Klaar from Odido (formerly T-Mobile / Deutsche Telekom) for €26. If you point it the right way out your window, you can get 700-1000 mbps down and 150 (capped) mbps up. Ping is around 35ms. Horrid modem firmware though, you get ping spikes up to 400-850ms (!!) under load due to bufferbloat, but you can of course solve that with your own router and SQM :+)

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#97

Post by IshKebab »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #6

Over the last 10 years I’ve moved 5 times. Each time having a fiber connection with at least symmetrical gigabit has been a hard requirement. Looking forward I’m considering moving again for very fast networking where I can begin to stream videos in 4k 60fps to small groups from my home, as well as offering a semi-permanent home for mid sized files (500mg-50gb). The ability to download/upload large files without worr…

I've found that most websites and internet service max out at around 250Mbps anyway so I don't feel like there's much point paying for more.

An exception is Steam, but I don't download games that often.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#98

Post by chermi »

halestock wrote: post #4

Meanwhile, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/fcc-abolishes-gi...

I hate the state intervention here. But let's not pretend the track record of the status quo was great.

This intervention is embarrassing and corrupt. Infrastructure in america is also embarrassing, which I'm guessing is also some combo of corruption and self-inflicted wounds on state capacity.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#99

Post by rconti »

yieldcrv wrote: post #78
bitmasher9 wrote: post #6

Over the last 10 years I’ve moved 5 times. Each time having a fiber connection with at least symmetrical gigabit has been a hard requirement. Looking forward I’m considering moving again for very fast networking where I can begin to stream videos in 4k 60fps to small groups from my home, as well as offering a semi-permanent home for mid sized files (500mg-50gb). The ability to download/upload large files without worr…

How do you go about learning this about a building or neighborhood while planning a move? Its something I usually find out later

In the US, there are various websites for checking service availability based on zip code. You can fairly easily find local ISPs in a region and then use their own service checker to see if service is available at a specific address -- in other words, the same method you'd use if you already lived there and wanted to order service.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#100

Post by hocuspocus »

cassepipe wrote: post #79
utopiah wrote: post #23

Yep... was on the countryside for the Summer in places so small they didn't even have a bakery, which in France matters. What did they have though? Optic fiber, high bandwidth, low latency, reliable and for a very low price. Honestly I think ADSL was already enough for most people, I mean non professionals, but now I think France has the infrastructure for a good enough Internet for the next few decades. I can't fath…

The "sad" thing is that it is generally not advantageous for people to have both a phone data plan and an internet box plan if the latter is not shared so a lot of people have a fiber connection on their wall but still use their phone as hotspot since bigger data plan It's not the end of the world but it feels like a wasted effort. I don't know what the solution is.

It's not really a big issue. Connecting the last meters of fiber is cheap, either done by default in new constructions, or on demand for older houses. ISP's hardware to run PON is cheap.

Once street level fiber deployment is done, whether market penetration follows or not isn't a huge deal.

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