France to intervene in broadband coverage

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France will shortly call on telecoms operators to offer broadband services across all its territory for a maximum of 35 euros (29.3 pounds) a month, a government minister said on Thursday.

This would make France the first country in the European Union to effectively mandate the supply of broadband services.

It signals a retreat by France from its informal campaign to include broadband in EU rules for operators that are designated universal service providers.

A universal service provider can obtain public aid in return for ensuring that a range of basic services is available in thinly populated areas, and not just big cities.

Eric Besson, a junior French minister of state, said there was no consensus among EU states for making broadband mandatory in EU universal service rules.

As EU president, France was launching a debate on how to make broadband more widely available but this could take time to reach a conclusion.

With no consensus on broadband in universal services among EU states, France will take steps on its own turf.

"As far as France is concerned, we have decided, due to the potentially long time this debate can take, to launch a tender for a form of universal access to broadband from the start of next year," Besson told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of EU telecoms ministers.

"We want that, from 2010, that 100 percent of French people have access to broadband which for us is at least 512 kilobytes a second," Besson said.

Two of France's biggest operators, France Telecom and SFR have already signalled they will comply by the end of 2009 to include broadband among their universal services, Besson said.

It was unclear if the operators will be eligible for aid in return for giving such commitments.

The European Commission has yet to give its final decision on whether it will propose including broadband in the list of universal services.

"We are disappointed that the European Commission has not made proposals to this effect," Besson said.

He told a news conference after the meeting that some EU states wanted to give the market more time to provide total broadband coverage before any bloc-wide intervention.

EU Telecoms Commissioner, Viviane Reding, said Brussels was taking steps to increase broadband availability as seven percent of the bloc's citizens have no access to the Internet and nearly a third of those were in rural areas.

Some 2.3 billion euros of EU funds are available between 2007 and 2013 for broadband networks with an extra 1 billion euros in an broader EU economic stimulus package announced on Wednesday covering the next two years, Reding said.

"It's member states who have to make their plans and call for the money to distribute it," she told a news conference.

Applications would be assessed under the bloc's state aid rules to ensure projects were justified, ensure open access and are technology neutral, Reding said.

(Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Elaine Hardcastle)