The size of the French mobile telephony market reached almost €22 billion in 2007 and was the source of 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in France . By the end of 2007, investment in mobile telecoms networks in France totalled almost €33 billion, according to the French Association of Mobile Operators.

France is already preparing for next-generation networks, known as 4G. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2008, Alcatel-Lucent of France and NEC of Japan announced the creation of a joint venture in the field of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) infrastructure. The roll-out of the technology will allow users to benefit, by 2011-2012, from connection speeds of almost 100 MB/s, compared with approximately 3.6 MB/s for current 3G networks. France Telecom is also investing heavily in research and development, with a budget of €600 million allocated to 4,200 researchers and engineers.

The presence of international companies that have chosen France to set up industrial or research facilities – including Motorola, Nortel, Hitachi , Texas Instruments and LG – demonstrates its attractiveness to the sector. In 2007, the Invest in France Agency , France ’s foreign direct investment agency, helped Chinese telecoms group Huawei, one of the world’s largest networking and telecoms equipment suppliers, set up its R&D centre in France . Huawei is now taking advantage of the newly improved R&D tax-credit scheme, which makes France the most attractive R&D tax-credit environment in the EU.

In addition to industrial resources, there are several internationally renowned public-sector R&D laboratories in France . Among the Federation of Grandes Écoles and research bodies, the Groupe des Ecoles de Télécommunications (Telecoms Schools Group) plays an unrivalled role internationally in the development and sharing of knowledge in information sciences and technologies. INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Automatique et Informatique, translated as the National Institute for Research in Automation and IT) has 3,500 personnel in key areas within the field of information and communication technologies.

Some of France ’s Pôles de Compétitivité (clusters of excellence located all over France that specialise in specific industrial sectors) bring together leading telecoms companies and academic centres. Three in particular devote significant resources to innovative development in telecoms. They are Systém@tic in the Paris region, Images et Réseaux in Brittany , and Solutions Communicantes et Sécurisées (SCS) in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (a high-tech cluster that includes the town of Sophia-Antipolis ).
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