The French M2M market saw annual growth in connections improve for a third consecutive quarter, reaching 33.5 percent in the three months to June (+30.1% in Q1), according to Arcep's mobile statistics. Quarterly net additions passed the one million mark for the first time, bringing the total M2M installed base to 13.7 million.
Excluding M2M, the mobile market reached 73.5 million connections at end-June across mainland France and the French overseas territories, with the annual growth rate increasing for a third quarter to 2.2 percent (+1.7% in Q1). This positive trend continued to be driven by postpaid subscriptions (+4.0%), more than offsetting the drop in prepaid SIMs (-7.3%).
Looking at the quarterly movement, the market in mainland France recorded over 460,000 net additions since March (excluding M2M SIMs), of which 312,000 gained by the four MNOs and 148,000 across the country’s MVNOs.
Within consumers’ postpaid connections (excluding B2B), contract-free plans continued to gain ground, accounting for 72.3 percent of the subscriber base in the second quarter, up from 67.4 percent a year earlier.
