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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

#191

Post by dietr1ch »

organsnyder wrote: post #159
O3marchnative wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been considering upgrading from 1 Gbps to 5 Gbps. Have you noticed any significant benefits for any particular use cases?

I have 5Gbps symmetrical. I love having it, but the biggest use-case has been bragging about it to my colleagues. I haven't even had the full bandwidth available at my desk for a while now (I've had a terrible time terminating cat6a for reliable 10Gbe, so I'm usually on wifi), and it hasn't really bothered me much.

Even 1Gbps has been hard to justify for me TBH, most things over the internet aren't fast enough.

The nice thing though, is that latency is great independent of other traffic as bandwidth is pretty much never saturated

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#192

Post by donalhunt »

There is an official European Union goal to achieve 100% Gigabit network coverage for all European households by 2030. While it does not exclusively specify fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), fiber is the primary technology utilized to meet this standard, which requires networks to deliver speeds of 1 Gbps and above. It is underpinned by Regulation (EU) 2024/1309, known as the Gigabit Infrastructure Act (GIA).

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/2030-digi...

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#193

Post by OroPla »

oliwarner wrote: post #120

It's pretty insane. Our family has a holiday home in a fairly mountainous region in central-southern France. Dwindling population, no major tourist activity, wine production. We'd long suffered the worst imaginable 56k but in 2018, the local ISP just ran fibre out to everyone . I think the current service is cheaper than the 56k was too, and far cheaper than any of the 4/5G options back then. What I mean (vis á vis i…

I think about fast enough Internet the way I think about running water and electricity: essential.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#194

Post by Symbiote »

sph wrote: post #92
alerighi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Average speeds are higher in the UK than Italy.

My brother in the UK has 1Gb/s fibre in a village of less than 100.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#195

Post by microtonal »

Always42 wrote: post #166
oliwarner wrote: post #120

It's pretty insane. Our family has a holiday home in a fairly mountainous region in central-southern France. Dwindling population, no major tourist activity, wine production. We'd long suffered the worst imaginable 56k but in 2018, the local ISP just ran fibre out to everyone . I think the current service is cheaper than the 56k was too, and far cheaper than any of the 4/5G options back then. What I mean (vis á vis i…

Wonder how many thousands of taxpayer dollars was spent for this. Does not seem efficient.

Good governance is sometimes taking the money/income from dense areas (cities) and investing it in rural areas. Also, similar to how copper lasted many decades, a fiber network is a one time large investment cost and then you reap the benefits for decades.

Not everything has to be a capitalist 'minimize cost, maximize profits' game.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#196

Post by telesilla »

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…

I spent time in the interior of Portugal that had fibre internet, it was very impressive and incredibly helpful to the village. Better payment services and banking for example.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#197

Post by dguest »

organsnyder wrote: post #152
jazzkingrt wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't starlink and its competitors a cheaper way for rural places to get fast internet?

I'm guessing that right now many countries wouldn't like the idea of areas being served solely by an American ISP.

There's a lot more when it comes to Starlink:

- The obvious political point: that ISP is subject to laws in a country that is testing its legal framework and diplomacy in new (some may say unpredictable) ways.

- The first rule of public funding is that the money goes back to the public. Roughly all (if not all) of the jobs for Starlink go to the US, whereas fiber installation in France employs French people.

- Paying for Starlink is a terrible investment because the entire constellation is disposable. Every satellite will burn up in roughly 5 years and the whole network would go dead without more launches. Fiber, once installed, is at least serviceable.

- Another political point, but the only company that can launch replacements economically is also subject to laws in that same country.

Starlink hands an awesome amount of semi-soft power to whatever country controls it. It doesn't really matter what country that is: it's a huge strategic liability to anyone who doesn't hold the keys. Until there's at least another player in the game I'd expect a lot of countries to be wary.

Ironically, that could mean Starlink/SpaceX really needs a competitor before it can become a universal solution.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#198

Post by microtonal »

Always42 wrote: post #187
euio757 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how many thousands of taxpayer dollars $0. It's taxpayers euros. But it's not inefficient if this fixes a chicken-egg problem: overcrowded big city and underpopulated rural area sucks. Nobody can/wants to go in rural area if they can't make a living there. A fiber speed Internet unlocks lifestyle for many. It's the same as investing in say a high speed railway between major cities A and B and adding a middle-of-now…

You can bring internet to these other places other than by running a 1km fiber cable, which may be more efficient. Think about it, run. A cable super long to one house or use a dish? Unless there is truly no other options in france

Unless France is going to launch the satellites themselves (which is also very expensive), you become dependent on another party, which is much worse.

I don't know how it works in France, but in many European countries phone/DSL lines and fiber is highly regulated. Even if it is run by a company, they usually have to provide fair access to other providers so that there is competition. For instance, we have a XGS-PON connection to home (used to be AON) and I can probably choose at least from ten ISPs. This is nice, because they try to compete on prices and bandwidth (e.g. the company that owns the network we are on offers 4Gbit symmetric max, but a competitor offers 8Gbit over the same fiber).

Much harder to accomplish that with satellite internet and foreign companies.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#199

Post by zem »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #173
basilgohar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot...and I mean a LOT of money...is wasted on things that benefit only a very, very small percentage of elite people in ways that don't translate to benefits to the larger society or regular people. What's so wrong if something is done to benefit the regular people once in a while? One may argue that this also isn't helping "regular people" but I mean the subsidy aspect in particular. I mean, oil companies in the…

> very small percentage of elite people Except when these "elite" people are inhabitants of a lost hole in the middle of the Creuse and suddenly all children can access Internet in a civilized way. The same way the true elites in Paris have done for some time already.

I think you misunderstood the comment you are replying to - they are arguing that running fibre to rural communities is a good use of subsidies, and contrasts pleasantly with the usual sort of subsidy that only a few large corporation owners really benefit from.

Re: France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

#200

Post by throw101010 »

oliwarner wrote: post #120

It's pretty insane. Our family has a holiday home in a fairly mountainous region in central-southern France. Dwindling population, no major tourist activity, wine production. We'd long suffered the worst imaginable 56k but in 2018, the local ISP just ran fibre out to everyone . I think the current service is cheaper than the 56k was too, and far cheaper than any of the 4/5G options back then. What I mean (vis á vis i…

> Our area is never going to generate the return on internet alone, and that's nice.

The time scale for optical fibers' profitability is much longer than copper. The media itself is passive, cheap to maintain, and easy to upgrade by lighting more fibers or moving to newer PON standards. That's why operators often overbuild the fiber count per home on purpose, something they would rarely do with copper (the time scale and upgradability being more limited by the intrinsic properties of the medium).

Fibering up a mountain becomes more rational once you view it as a 40+ year asset with very low upgrade cost (for the medium itself, not the equipment connected to it). Not a 10-year ROI project like copper often was. And even more rational when you can get subsidies by governments which are usually eager to develop the economical activity in regions that otherwise would have little to no opportunity to grow significantly.

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