A damning observation: rural France abandoned by its own operators
At the end of 2025, it must be acknowledged that the government's promises of the France Very High Speed Plan have proved to be a mirage for thousands of French municipalities. Initially, this ambitious plan promised "good high speed for all by the end of 2020 and very high speed for all by the end of 2022". Here we are in 2025, and the reality on the ground is quite different.
The example of Coutansouze (03330), a small municipality of 200 inhabitants where I live, is symptomatic of this digital divide that gnaws at our rural territories. This municipality of the Allier with 200 inhabitants is still waiting for its fibre connection, despite the commitments made by the public authorities and the mandated operators. Worse still, the inhabitants were promised a hypothetical connection "between mid-2023 and the end of 2025" without any precise timetable, before these deadlines were pushed back to who knows when… 2027? 2028?
The inefficiency of French public structures
Unkept promises and a lack of transparency
The case of Auvergne Numérique, the public authority in charge of deployment in this region, perfectly illustrates the dysfunctions of the French system. Their evasive answers, their constant postponements and their inability to provide realistic deadlines testify to a failing management of public funds and of the commitments made.
ARCEP (Electronic Communications Regulatory Authority) itself implicitly acknowledges this failure by regularly publishing reports on the "white zones" and the deployment delays, without however effectively compelling the operators to respect their commitments.
A complex and bureaucratic system
France chose a deployment system involving multiple actors: State, territorial authorities, public authorities, private delegates. This multiplication of stakeholders creates a dilution of responsibilities where everyone passes the buck, to the detriment of the citizens.
The American alternative: efficiency and innovation
Starlink: when private innovation supplants public inefficiency
Faced with these failures, French citizens are turning massively to Starlink, the satellite internet service of Elon Musk. Since its launch in France, Starlink offers:
Immediate coverage across the entire French territory
Speeds ranging from 50 to 200 Mbps, well above the ADSL available in rural areas
An equipment price now accessible (99€ for the V4 antenna)
A residential subscription at 40€/month, comparable to French offers
The difference is striking: where French operators have been promising for years without delivering, Starlink deploys and works immediately.
Amazon Kuiper: the competition intensifies
Amazon announces the launch of Project Kuiper with speeds that can reach 1 Gbps by the end of 2025. This new offer promises to make the monopoly of the traditional French operators tremble even more.
Starlink users testify to a remarkable satisfaction. One subscriber, although eligible for fibre in his village, prefers to keep Starlink for several well-founded technical reasons:
Superior reliability: Contrary to the frequent fibre outages (0.1% on the national average, up to 0.4% at certain operators according to ARCEP), Starlink works even in heavy snowfall
Real vs theoretical speeds: Theoretical fibre speeds are rarely reached in practice, the real speed generally being 10 to 30% slower. Starlink constantly delivers its average 108 Mb/s, a speed largely sufficient for domestic and professional use
Material limits: The fibre offers at 8 Gbit/s remain largely commercial, most domestic equipment (network cards, Cat 6 Ethernet cables) supporting only 1 Gbit/s maximum
Resilience in the face of disasters: the decisive advantage of the satellite
Satellite internet presents a major strategic advantage in the face of the natural disasters that regularly strike France. Weather hazards have been responsible, over the last 20 years, for 49.7% of the natural disasters recorded in France, and since 2021, rescue services in France are regularly blocked by telecommunications and network problems.
The recent examples are instructive:
Storm Alex (October 2020): The fibres that supply the fixed, internet and mobile networks were cut in various places in the valleys of the Roya, the Tinée and the Vésubie. Entire municipalities remained digitally isolated for months.
Storm Ciarán (November 2023): The strong winds caused direct damage to the telecom infrastructure with Finistère particularly hit, and 460 mobile sites out of service. More than 1 million French people found themselves deprived of a mobile network, some areas remaining without internet for several months.
Other climatic events: Storms, floods, exceptional snowfalls regularly paralyse the vulnerable terrestrial infrastructures. The relay antennas depend on the electrical supply to function, and during disasters, the electrical networks are often damaged.
The Starlink advantage: An individual satellite antenna remains operational even when the entire terrestrial infrastructure collapses. No drowned or sabotaged DSLAM, no downed pylon, no severed cable. The direct link with the satellites guarantees a continuity of service even in the most critical situations.
The disastrous consequences for the French economy
Flight of capital abroad
Each Starlink subscription represents 480€ per year that leave the French economy to enrich an American company. Multiplied by the tens of thousands of current and future French subscribers, this is a considerable shortfall for our national operators.
Loss of digital sovereignty
By abandoning their own citizens, Orange, SFR, Free and Bouygues Telecom offer the French market on a silver platter to the American giants. This growing dependence on foreign infrastructure poses major strategic questions for our digital sovereignty.
Impact on rural entrepreneurship
Rural entrepreneurs, deprived of a decent connection, are forced either to abandon their projects, or to depend on foreign actors. It is a vicious circle that impoverishes our territories and reinforces the rural exodus.
My testimony as an entrepreneur perfectly illustrates this reality: despite a mobile plan of 350 GB at 13.99€, it takes me 2 hours to upload a 2 GB video to my YouTube channel, because of a derisory upload speed of 1 Mb/s. The only local antenna is not 5G. This Ubuesque situation, where I lose precious hours performing tasks that should take a few minutes, summarises on its own the scale of the situation.
Impossible to share large files efficiently with partners, impossible to develop a digital activity serenely, impossible to compete with better-connected urban competitors. The available ADSL offers "medieval" speeds that paralyse any modern entrepreneurial ambition. It is often said that time is money, and one fully experiences it when one is located in what are called white zones. These rural entrepreneurs, true vital forces of our territories, thus find themselves curbed in their momentum by a failing digital infrastructure that the public authorities are incapable of modernising.
A major political and economic failure
Elected officials disconnected from realities
Our elected officials, whether local or national, seem to have lost sight of the urgency of the situation. They content themselves with announcements and plans on paper, without ever ensuring their effective implementation. Meanwhile, their constituents suffer the consequences of this negligence.
The 2022 report of the Court of Auditors on the France Very High Speed Plan already pointed out these dysfunctions, without this provoking any awakening.
A France at several speeds
This digital divide creates a two-speed France: on one side the connected metropolises, on the other the abandoned rural territories. This territorial inequality goes against the republican principles of equality and national solidarity.
The revolution of mobile telecommunications
The imminent arrival of American operators
With the European regulatory evolution and the free-trade agreements, it is not impossible that American actors will soon offer direct mobile offers in Europe, bypassing our traditional operators thanks to satellite technologies.
Innovation at the service of the user
Where our French operators struggle to innovate and content themselves with reproducing obsolete models, American companies constantly revolutionise their offer: more efficient antennas, constantly rising speeds, competitive rates.
Conclusion: an urgent awakening necessary
The example of Coutansouze is unfortunately not isolated. Thousands of French municipalities live the same situation of digital abandonment. While our leaders multiply the announcements and the plans, French citizens vote with their wallet by massively choosing the American solutions.
It is urgent that our elected officials become aware of this reality: their inaction and the inefficiency of the structures they supervise push the French into the arms of foreign competition. Each passing day reinforces France's dependence on American technologies and weakens our digital sovereignty.
The question is no longer whether our traditional operators will catch up on their delay, but rather to measure the extent of the market shares they have already lost forever. In this global technological war, France is losing a decisive battle through its own negligence.
There is still time to act, but the window of opportunity is closing rapidly. Our rural territories deserve better than unkept promises and constant postponements. They deserve a connectivity worthy of the 21st century, and if France is not capable of providing it to them, others will take care of it in its place.
Faced with this situation, many French people have already made their choice and have switched to Starlink. Many of them testify that, now that optical fibre has arrived in their village, they would not leave the American operator for anything in the world. Many others are following or will follow; Amazon Kuiper or Starlink will be their next internet access providers. And contrary to the usual whining about "digital sovereignty", these consumers abandoned by their own operators will shed no tears over the future social plans at Orange, SFR, Free or Bouygues. When one abandons one's clientele for years, one should not be surprised that it goes to look elsewhere. French operators are beginning today to reap what they have sown, and this will accelerate in the coming months and years: the indifference of consumers who have ended up understanding that efficiency and innovation came from elsewhere. For my part, I have just joined the millions of Starlink customers, fed up with waiting for someone to deign to offer me an internet access in adequacy with our time.