France - continues to lag behind in business and consumer uptake and usage of ICT

France performs moderately on the Connectivity Scorecard 2010, with a performance resembling that of its neighbor Germany.
The country has a respectable score in business usage and skills; French businesses are sophisticated IT users though they don’t invest in IT services as much as their counterparts in neighboring United Kingdom. In the consumer category, too, France offers a respectable performance, though nowhere close to the leading countries on any given metric. France is also a good performer on the government-related metrics.

While it reports good broadband penetration, the country lags behind in broadband quality as measured by average download speeds and trails many countries in fiber-to-the-home deployments. Similarly, a significant number of French consumers use the internet but France does not report high frequent internet usage. France also offers a ‘mixed bag’ performance in business infrastructure, with high broadband uptake offset by modest investments in IT hardware and software.

France resembles Germany in that whilst it is not a laggard or an unsophisticated economy, it does not appear to a leader in adopting cutting-edge technology. However, the reasons for this, especially considering the country’s relatively successful telecommunications sector, remain unclear.

France Connectivity Performance by Scorecard Component