LTE: France: SFR to launch services in November.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

LTE: France: SFR to launch services in November.

French mobile operator SFR plans to launch 4G LTE service on 28 November this year. The operator had earlier scheduled the launch in early 2013 but now it has advanced the launch date. SFR will introduce LTE first in Lyon followed by other cities.

Operator had started 4G deployments during this year including Lyon and Montpellier and currently doing advanced pilot.

SFR also announced that its 3G+ (HSPA) network now covers 98.6% of the population and will reach the level of 99.3% population at the end of 2013. Operator also plans to provide Dual Carrier HSDPA + (DC-HSDPA+) coverage to 60% of the population by the end of 2012. Operator had started DC-HSDPA + deployments in 2011.

Video: French wine growers get help using satellite technology.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Video: French wine growers get help using satellite technology.

Wine growers in the south of France are using satellite technology to observe their vines as they ripen, leading to targeted harvesting and a higher quality product.

The annual grape harvest has begun in France's celebrated Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine region. Oenologists like Didier Robert have high hopes for this year's vintages.

DIDIER ROBERT, OENOLOGIST: "This is a really pretty white wine from Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Very fruity and with good freshness. This is the style we are looking for." ... and they're looking for it from above. A number of French vintners are now using satellite imaging to ensure optimum quality of the wines they produce. The service, called Oenoview, scans the terrain and provides computer-generated images, which indicate variations in the vines and soil type. This helps wine growers gauge ripeness in different areas of the vineyard so that harvesting happens at the most favorable time. Cedric Hallereau, manager at the Cooperative Wine Institute, says it's not just harvesting that benefits, but also pruning and fertilizing.

CEDRIC HALLEREAU, VINEYARD MANAGER AND WINE-GROWING CONSULTANT AT THE CO-OPERATIVE WINE INSTITUTE "We can see color differences which allow us to target our actions in the vineyard, to see what these different zones have to do with the quality of the grape, to be able to separate them during the harvest and then also to be able to use this map for fertilizing, pruning and removing buds and so on." The Fortia Chateau vineyard in Chateauneuf-du-Pape uses the technology on its entire 31 hectare estate at a cost of 5,000 euros a year. Manager Pierre Pastre says it's money well spent.

PIERRE PASTRE, MANAGER OF THE FORTIA CHATEAU IN CHATEAUNEUF-DU-PAPE: "Thanks to the mapping of this plot, we have been able to prune quite severely in February/March this year, and just adjusting the numbers of bunches in June/July by so-called 'green picking'. So now we can take the benefit to have a very nice bunch of grapes." About 30 wine-growers use Oenoview in France, and the concept is being exported to Canada, Morocco, Greece and Japan. And soon, sipping a glass of fine wine may produce a much more predictable finish.

DIDIER ROBERT, OENOLOGIST: "The map will help us to obtain this result every year because we can choose the right vineyard to elaborate the right style of wine." ... which for both growers and consumers adds up to the perfect combination.

France: Orange has begun offering NFC-enabled SIM cards nationwide.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Orange enabled NFC sim card.

France: Orange has begun offering NFC-enabled SIM cards nationwide.

French incumbent Orange has begun offering NFC-enabled SIM cards nationwide in preparation for what it calls the “mass deployment”  of mobile contactless services. The UpTeq NFC SIM cards are supplied by Gemalto and  are the first SIMs on the market to offer the same security level as chip-based payment or smart cards, the firms said.

Orange, which claims to be the first European operator to roll out this technology on a national scale, said it plans to rent slots on the SIMs to service providers, including banks, retailers and transport providers, which is in line with the GSMA’s suggested model of NFC service operation.

“The solution will allow any service provider to dynamically manage its own security domain in the card and to load, personalise and update its related NFC applications remotely over time,” Orange said.

In adopting this stance, Orange places the burden of innovation and uptake on the service providers. Earlier this year the firm’s director for contactless services, Vincent Barnaud, told Telecoms.com that Orange had run successful trials with hotels, airlines and car rental companies and that the firm believed the “service providers are ready to go if and when there is a customer base ready to use NFC.”

Gemalto

France: Q1 2012: Free Mobile signs up 2.6M subscribers.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

France: Q1 2012: Free Mobile signs up 2.6M subscribers.

Iliad’s Free Mobile – the low-cost French operator launched at the beginning of the year – revealed today that it had signed up 2.6 million subscribers by the end of Q1, claiming to have captured nearly 4 percent of the French mobile market in just 80 days.

The firm highlighted figures to show that the total French market had grown by 854,000 subscribers in Q1, suggesting that Free Mobile’s 2.6 million customers included a substantial number of defections from rivals. Market-leader Orange France lost 615,000 mobile customers following Free’s launch on 10 January.

Free offers two ‘no-contract’ plans: EUR2/month for 60 minutes of voice calls and EUR19.99/month for unlimited voice, SMS, MMS and Internet. It said that its subscriber base at the end of Q1 was “distributed evenly between the two plans, between the Free community and newcomers, and between subscriptions with mobile number portability and those with a new phone number assigned.”

“With its commercial and price innovations, Free Mobile has liberated conventions and galvanised a market that had been at a standstill for many long years,” the operator added in a statement.

The firm also did well in its traditional fixed broadband business, surpassing 5 million subscribers for the first time. It added 191,000 new subs in the period, which it said accounted for “well over” half of all the country’s broadband net additions.

Iliad’s total Q1 revenue rose 29 percent to EUR655.7 million, ahead of the EUR594-628 million range predicted in a Reuters analysts’ poll. This included EUR97.5 million of revenue from the new mobile business.

France: Virgin Mobile becomes full Orange France MVNO .

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

France: Virgin Mobile becomes full Orange France MVNO .

France Telecom-Orange will allow Virgin Mobile to run on its network in France as full MVNO. Omea Telecom-owned Virgin Mobile will begin to operate on the network in a few months.

 Virgin Mobile will use its own core network components and interconnection equipment while using the Orange radio network. Virgin Mobile previously ran on Orange’s network as a light MVNO using solely Orange’s infrastructure.