France Is Playing LTE Catch-Up – Deployment Statistics

So far I wasn't exactly impressed by French network operators and their LTE deployments. But it seems 2013 was the year they started to be serious about it. Today I came across current figures of 2G, 3G and LTE deployments of all network operators released by the French regulator and updated monthly. Have a look here for lots of interesting details.

Currently, Bouygues leads with 5.392 active LTE base stations. That compares to around 6.000 LTE base stations currently in operation by Vodafone in Germany (reference). The difference, however, is that most Vodafone LTE sites use the 800 MHz band and thus cover a wider area than those of Bouygues. 3G wise, Bouygues has 10.542 base stations, which is a far lower number than those of Orange and SFR.

Orange, number two in the LTE race in France has 3.879 LTE base stations on air and 17.100 UMTS base stations.

For the numbers of the other operators, have a look at the link above.

2 thoughts on “France Is Playing LTE Catch-Up – Deployment Statistics”

  1. In fact Bouygues Telecom has roughly twice less customers than Orange and SFR and a similar spectrum: they were able to allocate part of their 1800 spectrum to LTE which the others could not (having already pushed some of their GSM900 users to 1800 while launching UMTS900). Bouygues Telecom has modernized its GSM network with multi-standard radio after which they have been able to launch LTE1800 (with the addition of some sites with 800 and 2600) as soon as they had the authorization. Thus they launched the LTE race with a major coverage advantage over the others who are deploying 800 or 2600 sites as fast as possible.

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