With its large and well-developed mobile market and rising consumer demand for connected lifestyle services, France represents a good long-term opportunity for infrastructure investor-owners. However, the country’s mobile network operators - which directly control the majority of their passive infrastructure - are burdened by the high cost of developing next-generation services at a time of falling income from proprietary voice and messaging services. In pursuit of cost-efficiencies, operators should consider selling towers to specialised third-party providers in the short to medium term.
France is the third-largest market in Western Europe in terms of registered mobile subscriber numbers, with approximately 78.7mn