France Telecom has signed Free, Thursday, July 21, an agreement to co-finance the fiber-optic networks, for high-speed Internet in some sixty cities located in sparsely populated areas.
This agreement follows the publication by an Orange "wholesale offer" to allow access by third party operators to its network of optical fiber (FTTH) outside densely populated areas, the group said in a statement. It covers the year 2020 of 5 million households in about 1,300 communes, for his part, said in a separate Free. The agreement with Free addresses "the sixty cities in which Orange is planning to start the deployment of fiber in 2011 and 2012," said Orange.
"This supply agreement with the first Free follow on the announcement of the deployment program Very High Speed made February 3, 2011" in response to a government appeal to operators to quantify their investment projects in optical fiber, says Orange. This program, in which France Telecom will spend two billion euros in 2015, aims to provide the optical fiber in 3600 municipalities, whether urban or rural, with a coverage of 10 million households in 2015 and 15 million in 2020 (corresponding to 17 million units), nearly 60% of French homes. Neither Orange nor have specified the Free Financial terms of the agreement, but France Telecom said that its share would be from the budget announced in February of two billion euros.
