€100m fund for high-speed internet in rural France

France has set aside €100million to ensure high-speed internet is available in even the most isolated areas of the country by 2022.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced the government plans to make "good broadband internet access" available nationwide by 2020 and "very high-speed access" by 2022.

In a speech in Cahors, Lot, Mr Philippe also said that he hoped to reach an agreement with mobile operators "by Christmas" to improve the quality of the network in rural areas.

The government may be willing to cancel or postpone an auction of new frequencies in 2021 in return for billions of euros of investment in the internet infrastructure, Le Parisien says, citing 'a source close to the talks'.

In July, President Emmanuel Macron pledged that high-speed internet access of at least eight megabits a second would be available to everyone in France by 2020, with very-high-speeds of 30 megabits per second two years later.

An estimated 7.5million people in France do not have high-speed internet access. Some 500,000 residents in 1,620 communes in France have no internet whatsoever, and 340 communes are off the mobile phone network. Some, including the isolated Finistère village of Trégarvan are off both grids, LCI reports.