Francois Fillon, France’s minister of information technology and post, issued a communique Tuesday that he will convene an interministerial meeting in September to eliminate any remaining roadblocks to the operation of innovative regional experiments on the information superhighway. The meeting will determine the State’s financial support [and] the adaptations of laws and regulations necessary to the start-up of projects. Such legal changes are necessary if the two French cable operators, water companies Lyonnaise des Eaux SA and Generale des Eaux SA, are to be able to provide telephone service on their cable networks in Annecy and Nice. France Telecom’s monopoly on voice service currently prohibits it. According to Les Echos, the move will authorise specific exceptions to the operator’s monopoly by the end of the year. While the initiative does not involve a total market liberalisation, it appears to be an early response to Brussels’ move to get member states to open up alternative network infrastructure next year, two years ahead of the 1998 deadline for an end to the voice monopoly. Fillon said the government also intends to organise fora throughout France this year to promote synergies between potential actors on the information superhighway. The workshops will concern electronic commerce and payment, electronic press and information services, teleworking, teaching, research, culture, health, tourism and public administration. Finally, he intends to promote more internationa l initiatives and engage a policy of deploying France on the Internet. A ministry spokeswoman said they were not yet ready to say how many regional experiments would be licensed, but indicated that she thought the application process was open to everyone. It would, however, be difficult for a company, particularly a foreign one, to mount a proposal, since the government has already settled on a group of 218 information superhighway project proposals that merited implementation, but needed either money or legal changes in the established order to be initiated.
