France: 20 million broadband subscribers and counting

At 20 million users and counting, it's clear that France's residential customers love broadband. Just in Q1 2010 alone, the country signed on 369,000, bringing the subscriber total to 20.05 million (according to French telecom regulator Arcep) as of the end of March.

On a year-on-year basis, high-speed and ultra high-speed subscriber base grew nine percent in Q1 versus 10.5 percent in Q4 09 and 10.8 percent in Q3 09. During the period, ultra high-speed subscribers grew 14.6 percent to 330,000.

Contributing to ultra high-speed broadband growth was Fiber to the X. As of the end of Q1, 40,000 subscribers signed up for fiber-based broadband services. Numericable, which operates a hybrid Fiber to the building network that connects the last feet to subscribers via coax, dominated France's FTTX customer base with 77 percent of the country's subscribers, with the remainder of fiber-based broadband customers being connected via Fiber to the Home (FTTH). At the end of Q1, about 40 French municipalities have built out FTTH networks and 4.5 million homes are passed with FTTH.

For more:
- Telecompaper has this article

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