Laure de La Raudière has been appointed as the new Chair of Arcep for a six-year term, by an Order published in the Journal Officiel of 28 January 2021
On 5 January 2021, the President of the Republic nominated Laure de La Raudière for appointment as the Chair of Arcep. In accordance with Article 13 of the Constitution, Laure de La Raudière appeared before the National Assembly Economic Affairs Committee on 13 January, then before the Senate Economic Affairs Committee on 20 January. Both committees issued a prior favourable opinion of this appointment.
A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, and a telecommunications engineer, Laure de La Raudière began her career with France Telecom – Orange in 1990 where she held a series of positions: Manager of the “Business Customers” department for the Paris Sud regional division, Director of “Key Accounts” then Director for the Eure-et-Loir department. After having been an associate in a data mining start-up, Pertinence Data Intelligence, in 2003 she founded Madisy-Conseil, then became executive director of Navigacom, two ICT consulting firms whose core clientele is large “user” enterprises.
Since 2007, Laure de La Raudière has been the Deputy for the Eure-et-Loir (Agir Ensemble), and a member of the National Assembly Economic Affairs Committee. Strongly committed to the multifarious issues surrounding digital technology, she was a co-rapporteur for several information reports on:
- Net neutrality (2010);
- Application of the law of 2009 on battling the digital divide (2011);
- How telecoms regulation affects the telecoms sector (2013);
- Developing France’s digital economy (2014);
- Connected objects (2016);
- Regional digital coverage (2017);
- Uses of the Blockchain (2018);
- The challenge of ensuring superfast access for all: consumers and businesses (2020);
- Impact of the current public health crisis on the ICT and postal sectors (2020).
Since 2018, Laure de La Raudière has been the co-chair of the National Assembly’s “Cybersecurity and Digital Sovereignty” parliamentary task force.
During her Parliamentary hearing, Laure de La Raudière set out her priorities for the three sectors that Arcep is responsible for regulating.
She stated that “citizens’ and businesses’ demand for access to high quality telecoms networks, both fixed and mobile, in every part of the country, and at an affordable price, will be the cornerstone of Arcep’s regulatory focus”. Work on digital technology’s environmental footprint will continue, and become a full-fledged priority for the Authority: “Arcep must examine how regulation can help achieve the goal of sustainable development, while maintaining ambitious network deployment targets”. Regarding postal affairs, actions must be taken to monitor and ensure the quality of the universal service. On the matter of print media distribution, Arcep’s newfound responsibility since October 2019, the main priority will be to implement the full regulatory system set forth in the law.