France Activates 890,000 ADSL Access Points in Q1

In Q1 2005, 890,000 ADSL access points were added across France. This includes lines served by France Telecom and the unbundled lines served by other carriers. The total number of ADSL access points in France (including unbundled lines) has now topped 7.2 million, up from 4.1 million a year earlier. As of 31-March-2005, France Telecom had 5,150,000 ADSL lines in its home market, of which 3,364,000 were serviced by its own Internet service and 1,787,000 were using third party ISPs.


Some highlights from the carrier's quartely report:


The number of residential telephone lines served by France Telecom in its home market was 27,419,000, roughly flat from a year earlier. Its market share of local calls was 70.9% compared with 75.2% a year earlier, and its market share of long-distance calls was 58.1% compared to 59.4% a year earlier.


Consumer Service revenues were down -3.0% on a comparable basis, linked to the 12.6% fall in revenues on residential telephone calls, with an 8.9% reduction in telephone traffic volume (switched voice), reflecting the losses in market share and the downturn of the overall fixed telephony market (measured at interconnection).


France Telecom now has 245,000 home VoIP users.


Elsewhere in Europe (Spain, Netherlands and UK), France Telecom has 1,682,000 broadband users, up from 745,000 a year earlier.


In Q1 2005, CAPEX increased significantly (+29.4% compared with the same period in 2004) and represented 10.0% of revenues. France Telecom Group attributed the rise to the rapid deployment of broadband, both fixed and mobile, notably with the launch of EDGE (to open at mid-year, with objective to cover 85% of the French population). In most of the other European countries in which Orange is present, UMTS and/or EDGE openings are planned for mid-2005 at the latest.


In broadband, France Telecom Group is upgrading its access network (RE-ADSL, ADSL 2+) and rolling out TV-over-DSL and VoIP services. In Spain, the UK and the Netherlands, France Telecom is rolling out unbundled packages. In Poland, the Group continues to rapid development of its ADSL offering.


France Telecom reported Q1 consolidated revenues of EUR 11.62 billion, compared with EUR 11.23 billion a year earlier, representing an increase of 3.5% on an actual basis and 1.0% on a comparable basis.
http://www.francetelecom.com