France
France was primarily serviced by France Telecom up until 1998 when the French government aimed to make competition mandatory in response to a European Directive. The past two decades have seen significant improvement in this regard, with Orange, Iliad, SFR and Bouygues Telecom surfacing as major telecommunication providers.
263
Data Centers
516
Service Providers
33
Network Fabrics
Market Overview
The French Republic, also known as Fifth Republic and France, is the largest country in the European Union and boasts the second largest population. France has a population of over 67.84 million, and an internet literacy rate of 85.6% (57.23 million internet users).
Data Center & Telecommunications Economy
The total GDP of France is over US $2.42 trillion and with a contribution of 4.2% from the digital economy, France’s data center industry is thriving. Besides France’s data centers, the digital economy includes 38.62 million fixed line telephone subscriptions and 70.42 million mobile telephone subscriptions.
Data Center Markets
France contains several data center clusters throughout the country providing plenty of colocation opportunities. The primary colocation data center markets in France are:
France doesn’t boast nearly as many submarine cables as the United Kingdom however it does enjoy cables landing on the coast of Brittany and along the North coast. There are 263 French data centers, the majority of these colocation facilities are located in and around Paris. Large carrier neutral French data centers feature rich ecosystems and state of the art equipment, ensuring maximum uptime and connectivity to over 1,832 service providers.
French Rankings
Cloudscene compares and ranks data centers, cloud service providers and network fabrics in a given market by a range of different qualities including ecosystem size and network size.
Richest Data Center Ecosystems
The top five colocation facilities in France are:
Top Data Center Operators
The top five data center operators in France are:
Top Service Providers
The top five cloud service providers in France are:
Energy Distribution
France has good coverage of the energy sector, which is an important attribute for any data center market. The nation is energized by 34% renewable or green sources, with the remaining provided by fossil or nuclear fuels. This gives French colocation facilities significant opportunities to take advantage of green energy. In addition to green energy, data center consumers enjoy a range of PUE scores between 1.20 and 1.90, with the average PUE for French data centers sitting at 1.39. French colocation facilities provide over 2860.18 MW of power and has a range of rack power options from 1.50 kW to 10.80 kW.
Service Providers
France’s communications industry is regulated by Autorite de Regulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (ARCEP). Major players in the carrier space include:
- Orange
- SFR
- Bouygues Telecom
- Free
While the top three service providers are:
There are numerous smaller providers as well.
Cloudscene French Facts
- Total number of French data centers: 263
- Total number of cloud service providers: 1,832
- Total number of network fabrics: 33
- Latest French data center added: Lille
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Latest French data centers service provider: GTT Communications
- Number of certified colocation facilities in France: 48