There are now more than 1.6 million individual internet access accounts in France, according to French internet service providers’ association, l’Association des Fournisseurs d’Acces et de Services Internet (AFA). The AFA, which counts AOL France, France Telecom SA’s market leader Wannadoo and UUNet Inc among its members, said ISPs clocked up 14 million hours of dialup to July 15.
This represented a 142,000 quarterly increase in subscribers. The figures include subscription-based and subscription-free accounts, people using free trial offers, but not access via methods such as cable or leased lines. The AFA expects the number of internautes to rapidly increase over the next six months as innovative pricing models, such as France Telecom’s 20 hours for FF100 ($15.75) access package, proliferate.