Paris, 11 January 2000
The Autorité de régulation des télécommunications (ART) recently released the numbers for mobile telephone subscriber numbers for the month of December.
ART reminds readers that it publishes a mobile telephony Observatory each month. This Observatory is the only recognized reference for the market. Before waiting for the complete document for December, which will be published sometime next week, ART has already released the figures as of 31 December 1999 for mobile telephony.
Mobile telephone sales broke all records this past Christmas season, with 2.5 million people in France subscribing to one of the three French operators (Itinéris and Améris – in the Antilles – for France Télécom; SFR and SRR – in Reunion – for Cegetel; Bouygues Télécom)
The 20 million subscriber mark was topped by 31 December 1999, as shown in the table below.
Number of subscriptions 31 December 1999 | Net growth for the months of December | Net growth over the past six months | |
Itinéris | 9,848,800 | 1,192,500 | 2,963,300 |
Améris | 202,200 | 29,400 | 67,000 |
Groupe France Télécom | 10,051,000 | 1,221,900 | 3,030,300 |
France Télécom market share | 48.7% | 47.4% | |
SFR | 7,223,800 | 856,100 | 2,065,100 |
SRR | 111,000 | 7,400 | 32,500 |
Groupe Cegetel | 7,334,800 | 863,500 | 2,097,600 |
Cegetel market share | 35.6% | 33.5% | |
Bouygues Télécom | 3,233,200 | 492,400 | 1,274,200 |
Bouygues Télécom market share | 15.7% | 19.1% | |
TOTAL | 20,619,100 | 2,577,800 | 6,402,100 |
The table shows that over one in three French citizens now owns a cell phone: the penetration rate has reached 34.3%.
31 December 99 | 31 December 98 | 31 December 97 | 31 December 96 | |
Groupe France Télécom | 10,051,000 | 5,552,000 | 3,080,000 | 1,430,000 |
Groupe Cegetel | 7,334,000 | 4,251,000 | 2,231,000 | 941,000 |
Bouygues Télécom | 3,233,000 | 1,406,000 | 505,000 | 90,000 |
Total | 20,619,000 | 11,210,000 | 5,817,000 | 1,302,000 |
Annual growth | 9,408,000 | 5,392,000 | 3,354,000 | |
% of annual growth | 84% | 93% | 136% |
The table above shows the extraordinary rise in the number of mobile telephone subscriptions; the number has been multiplied by 16 in just three years.
Linked documents
Consult the cell phone observatory