French regulator Arcep has published an updated scorecard measuring progress in the white-spots programme (called "zones blanches - centres-bourgs"), addressing the lack of mobile services in rural France. The main objectives of the programme are to provide at least basic voice and SMS services to 100 percent of the participating municipalities by the end of 2016, with full mobile broadband coverage targeted by end-June 2017. For these municipalities (accounting for approximately 1 percent of the national population), the proportion covered by basic voice and SMS services has remained broadly unchanged at 91 percent from January to October, while it has progressed from 45 to 57 percent when looking at the availability of mobile broadband.
Most of the municipalities without any coverage are waiting for public authorities to install a tower, said Arcep. For around a dozen, network roll-outs have been pending for several years and the regulator is urging operators, particularly SFR, to finalise their deployment plans as quickly as possible.
The report also measures progress with the deployment of LTE services in sparsely populated areas, set as part of the coverage obligations attached to the 800 MHz mobile licences held by Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR. These areas contain 22,500 rural municipalities representing 18 percent of the country's population and 63 percent of its land mass. Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR are required to cover 40 percent of the population in these areas by 17 January 2017 and Arcep will conduct a measurement campaign in the field during the first quarter of 2017 to verify that the obligations have been met. Orange and Bouygues Telecom have already exceeded their targets (43 and 41 percent respectively), while SFR reached 32 percent coverage as of October.
Source: https://www.telecompaper.com/news/arcep-publishes-mobile-white-spots-scorecard-update--1173511