France’s telecom market reached €9.3 billion in the third quarter of 2004, up 5.4% year over year. Mobile and Internet growth outweighed a decline in fixed telephony.
Fixed telephony keeps losing ground
Fixed telephony revenue fell 5.4% from the third quarter of 2003. France had about 33.7 million fixed lines at the end of the quarter.
Unbundling continued to expand, with 1 million unbundled lines at the end of the third quarter, up from 141,000 a year earlier. Close to 8 million fixed telephony subscribers were using an operator other than the incumbent.
Internet revenue and high-speed access rise
Registered operators generated €561 million in Internet revenue, up 72% from a year earlier. High-speed Internet accesses reached 5.5 million at the end of the quarter, close to half of all Internet accesses.
That mix still points to a market where broadband access was expanding quickly, even as the total telecom market remained dominated by older fixed and mobile service lines.
Mobile stays the largest revenue pool
Mobile telephony generated €3.8 billion in revenue, up 10.2% for the period. The volume of traffic originating on mobile phones was very similar to that of fixed phones.
Voice accounted for more than 90% of mobile telephony revenue, while data transport and personal messaging revenue rose 22.5% year over year. The number of mobile operator customers reached 42.9 million, and mobile penetration hit 71% at the end of the quarter.
Read for fixed-line and mobile operators
The quarter shows where French telecom revenue was shifting: away from fixed telephony and toward Internet and mobile. For operators, the sharper growth was in high-speed access and mobile data, even though voice still made up most mobile revenue.