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Last week, the French Parliament and the French regulatory authority ARCEP took major steps in defining a regulatory framework that aims at achieving widespread deployment of Fibre to the Home (FttH).

disagreements about conditions for such fibre access are subject to ARCEP's dispute-resolution powers under the existing Art. L. 36-8 and enhances the existing Art. L. 36-6 in a manner which enables ARCEP to make an ex-ante determination of the technical and financial conditions of the new symmetric fibre access obligation.

Since 2001 the UK Government has provided one billion pounds of “incentive” through state aid (channeled through the Regional Development Authorities), public-private partnerships and induced/aggregated demand from public services (egovernment projects, schools- and hospitals-online) to get BT to install DSL equipment in areas where the company said it was not “economically viable.” For documentation see “Broadband Procurement To Improve Efficiency and Effectiveness of Public Service Delivery” by Mike Gunston, UK Office of Government Commerce, presented at an OECD Broadband Workshop, Paris, France (2-4 December 2002). This huge subsidy bribe sum was supposed to achieve the Government’s goal of making the UK “the most extensive and competitive broadband market in the G7 by 2005″ (UK online: the broadband future - An action plan to facilitate roll-out of higher bandwidth and broadband services, Office of the e-Envoy, 13 February 2001).)

UK next-generation access: BT Vision or BT expediency?

But it would be a mistake to see the greatest pressure coming from the ‘fast’ end of the broadband market; in fact, it’s coming from the slow end

In several other European markets outside the UK, more than 15% of broadband subscriptions (as much as 30% in some) are now on cellular networks – up from next to nothing one year ago