French broadband base grows, Numericable leads high-speed race

At the end of December, France had 19.69 million broadband subscribers, up 10% year-on-year, according to the latest figures from regulator ARCEP.

Of those, 290,000 took ultra high-speed services (including 70,000 fibre-to-the-home subscribers). About 18.5 million (or 95% of the total) took ADSL services.

Cable operator Numericable signed up an additional 56,000 broadband customers in the fourth quarter, giving it a 27.2% share of new additions in the areas covered by its network, up from a 16.7% share of new adds in the third quarter. Numericable and partners using its network account for 220,000 of the 290,000 very high-speed subscribers.