The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, believes in giving free access to the Internet and wants to push development of a city wide telecom network. His intentions were first reported in Nouvel Observateur, quite a serious newspaper. James Enck says, “The article refers to a city-wide network, and also seems to suggest that the Mayor has aspirations of offering free narrowband internet access and local telephony to residents of more modest economic means.”

The city has apparently launched a tender for the construction of this network, as per translation of the French language original. Instead of going for ADSL technologies, the city wants to build a fiber network. It is amazing to read this bit of news emailed by a dear friend, because France is one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world already. Folks like Free are simply changing the game in that country. Rodrigo recently pointed to me his latest post where Free has launched free TV streaming to the PC for its subscribers. “I guess now we are starting to see why we need high bandwidth in this country,” he writes.

According to some estimates, France has fallen behind UK in the broadband subscriber numbers. If you have interest in global broadband, please visit our Broadband Wiki and help us keep it up-to-date.

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