French regulator Arcep has said that it has awarded 4G licences in the 800Mhz band to the incumbent operators Bouygues, Orange and SFR. Fourth applicant Free Mobile, owned by Iliad, was not successful. All four operators were previously awarded 4G licences at 2.6GHz.
French regulator Arcep has announced that all four of the country’s major operators have won licences to use its 2.6 GHz frequency band, which will be used in the deployment of LTE mobile networks. Orange/France Telecom will be allocated a duplex frequency block of 20 MHz, for which it bid €287.12m, while Iliad’s Free Mobile will also be allocated the same, after bidding €271m.
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French telecoms regulator ARCEP has said that the country’s LTE spectrum auction will be launched before May this year. The terms of the sale, which is expected to raise €2bn, are expected to be finalised shortly and ARCEP has said that it wants to award the spectrum before the end of this year.
French carriers Orange, SFR and Bouygues have joined forces with IT services firm Atos Origin to form a new joint venture dedicated to exploring a mobile payments initiative.
The French market is facing an inevitable slowdown as it reaches saturation point. According to Informa Telecoms & Media’s World Cellular Information Service, France had a market penetration of 90.72 per cent in March 2008, up from 84.58 per cent for the same period last year.