France : la couverture mobile

Ce que veulent dire les chiffres de France

Deux nombres comptent et un seul est celui que tout le monde cite. Le débit habituel, 71 Mbit/s, dit à quoi ressemble un bon moment.

Le dixième centile, 19 Mbit/s, c'est celui qu'il faut lire. C'est le débit du dixième le plus mauvais de la journée, quand l'antenne au-dessus de la gare est saturée et que tout le monde autour de vous est dessus. Un pays à médiane haute et à plancher bas, c'est un pays qui marche à merveille jusqu'au moment où vous en avez vraiment besoin.

Si le voyage dépend des appels vidéo ou du partage de connexion, organise toi en fonction du chiffre en heure chargée plutôt que du débit habituel.

Ce qui se passe en France quand le réseau est saturé

La congestion n'est pas une panne, c'est un mardi soir. La question est ce que votre eSIM peut y faire, et pour la plupart des eSIM de voyage la réponse est rien : un accord de gros par pays, un réseau, et aucune issue sauf acheter une deuxième eSIM chez quelqu'un d'autre, debout dans la rue.

Ici le trafic Orbislo passe par Orange et SFR. Quand le réseau où vous êtes se dégrade, nous vous basculons sur un autre, en plein voyage, sans que vous demandiez, et nous vous le disons après plutôt que de vous interrompre sur le moment.

Les opérateurs mobiles en France

• Orange: Orange won the largest 5G core band holding in mainland France in the 2020 award, 90 MHz at 3710 to 3800 MHz, for 854 million euros, against 80 MHz for SFR and 70 MHz each for Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile.
• SFR: SFR holds 80 MHz of the 3.5 GHz band, at 3490 to 3570 MHz, awarded in 2020 for 728 million euros, the second largest block after Orange.
• Bouygues Telecom: Bouygues Telecom holds 70 MHz of the 3.5 GHz band, at 3570 to 3640 MHz, awarded in 2020 for 602 million euros.
• Free Mobile: Free Mobile has used national roaming on Orange's 2G and 3G networks since 2011. A contract running from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2028 extends it, with speeds capped at 384 kbit/s and 2G and 3G data capped at 1 percent of the traffic on Free's own network, so Free can switch its 3G off.
• Free Mobile: Free Mobile holds 70 MHz of the 3.5 GHz band, at 3640 to 3710 MHz. Its bill came to 605,096,245 euros, against 602 million euros for the equal 70 MHz holding of Bouygues Telecom.

Les anciens réseaux en France

• Orange began switching off 2G in mainland France on 31 March 2026 in Bayonne, Anglet and Biarritz, then the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Landes on 12 May and seven more departments on 9 June, with the rest of the country from late September to late December 2026.
• SFR plans to stop 2G on 15 November 2026. Bouygues Telecom starts the same day in Brest, Guipavas, Nancy and Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy and covers the rest of mainland France from 1 to 15 December 2026. Free Mobile has no 2G network of its own and follows Orange's calendar.
• 3G goes later: Orange in 2028, SFR at the end of 2028 and Bouygues Telecom at the end of 2029, while Free Mobile had not announced a date. After that, a phone needs 4G with voice over LTE to keep making ordinary calls.
• The regulator reports that more than 99.8 percent of 2G and 3G mast sites already carry 4G and that 4G reaches more than 99.9 percent of the mainland population, so the switch off removes old technology rather than coverage.
• At the end of December 2025, 5.2 million SIM cards in mainland France still sat in devices that work only on 2G or on 2G and 3G, counting both phones and machine to machine equipment. Of those, 2.4 million were in devices limited to 2G.

La 5G en France

• The 3.5 GHz award shared 310 MHz between four operators. Each took a 50 MHz block for 350 million euros in return for coverage commitments, then eleven 10 MHz blocks were auctioned from 29 September to 1 October 2020, closing at 126 million euros per block and 2,786 million euros overall.
• Licences were issued on 12 November 2020 and use of the band was allowed from 18 November. Operators pay a fixed 2,789,096,245 euros in instalments from 2020 to 2034, plus 1 percent of the revenue earned on the frequencies each year.
• The four networks opened 5G to the public between late November and mid December 2020. Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR paired 3.5 GHz with 2.1 GHz, while Free Mobile relied on 700 MHz, a low band that covers more ground and reaches indoors better, though at lower speeds than 3.5 GHz.
• Each 3.5 GHz licence required 3,000 sites in the band by 2022, 8,000 by 2024 and 10,500 by 2025, with 25 percent of the last two milestones in sparsely populated or industrial areas outside the main cities. Eventually every site must deliver a 5G type service.
• The 5G licences require coverage of 16,642 km of motorway by 2025 and 54,913 km of main roads by 2027, with at least 100 Mbit/s available at each site serving those roads.
• At 1 June 2026 the frequency agency had authorised 55,365 5G sites across France, 49,004 of them declared operational. By band, 36,174 sites were authorised on 700 MHz, 27,585 on 2100 MHz and 37,803 on 3.5 GHz, and only ten sites carried 5G alone.
• In the first quarter of 2026, 35.4 million SIM cards were active on French 5G networks, 42 percent of all SIM cards. The average customer used 18.4 GB of mobile data a month, 1.4 GB more than a year earlier.
• All four operators' 3.5 GHz licences expire on 17 November 2035 and their 700 MHz licences on 7 December 2035.

Le réseau en France : à savoir

• Free Mobile is the only one of the four mainland networks without an 800 MHz licence. Its low band spectrum is 700 MHz and 900 MHz, while Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR each hold 700, 800 and 900 MHz.
• At 1 June 2026 the four networks each ran between 30,708 and 32,760 4G sites in mainland France: Orange 32,760, Bouygues Telecom 31,649, Free Mobile 31,128 and SFR 30,708. Free ran only 6,484 3G sites against roughly 29,500 to 29,900 for each of the others.
• The New Deal Mobile of January 2018 wrote coverage commitments into operator licences from July 2018, making them enforceable. It required every existing and new mast site to carry 4G by 31 December 2020, including sites that had offered only 2G or 3G.
• Under the targeted coverage scheme, each operator must eventually cover 5,000 new zones identified by local authorities and the government, installing a new site within 24 months of each zone's decree. The operators now fund this coverage entirely themselves.
• At 31 March 2026, 4,239 masts were in service under the targeted coverage scheme, and 853 under the separate scheme that extends fixed 4G home internet.
• Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR had to cover about 60,700 km of priority roads with calls, SMS and 4G outside vehicles by the end of 2020. The duty was raised to coverage inside vehicles from 25 January 2022 for Orange and SFR and from 9 October 2025 for Bouygues Telecom.
• Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR had to cover 90 percent of the regional rail network with 4G outside the trains, along the tracks, by 31 December 2025. Coverage inside the trains is a separate duty in all four operators' 700 MHz licences, with deadlines running to 2030.
• Licence coverage is judged on good coverage, meaning calls and SMS work outdoors in most cases and sometimes indoors, checked by field calls through a 10 dB signal attenuator. Operators must also offer voice over Wi-Fi under certain conditions, and since 2021 SMS over Wi-Fi, to help indoors.
• Operators must publish, in an open format, the list of mast sites that are down or under maintenance and not providing voice, SMS or 4G, and the regulator maps those sites daily on its Mon réseau mobile service.
• France had 84.7 million SIM cards in service at 31 March 2026, excluding 25.9 million machine to machine cards. Only about 6.8 million were prepaid, and virtual operators held 5.1 percent of the market.