EXCLUSIVE
It is an Arlesian politico-technological: whether at the level of the government or the City of Paris, the leaders who follow one another continue to promise a functional 4G network in the metro of the capital. The deployment plan of the underground mobile network began in 2012. Seven years later, it is clear that we are far from the stated goal. Progress is being made slowly with, it should be noted, a certain homogeneity among operators, according to the latest data from Arcep, the regulatory authority for telecoms, that Europe 1 has been able to obtain.
EXCLUSIVE - Mobile network improves in France, Orange still leading
Overall, it takes between 3 and 5 seconds to load an Internet page in the Paris metro. A relatively acceptable time but not totally worthy of the performance of 4G networks. In fact, some areas are only covered in 3G, or even in ... 2G. As a result, you sometimes have to wait ten seconds to hope to read an article, search the Internet or watch an online video. So there is still progress to be made to deploy 4G in the subway corridors.
A homogeneous cover
You can consult in detail the quality of the mobile network in the Paris metro on our map below ( to see it on a large scale, click here ). You can choose to display all operators or only one, two or three by checking or unchecking in the top left. Small precision: some surveys were done in the same place for the four operators, others at different locations.
So, is it better to be at Orange, Bouygues, SFR or Free to enjoy the Internet in the Paris metro? In reality, there are few disparities from one operator to another, according to Arcep surveys. It's Free that displays the best average loading time: 3.54 seconds. Orange (3.61) and Bouygues (3.68) are just behind. Only SFR is (a little) behind with an average of 4.12 seconds to display a page.