Paris (AFP)

The coronavirus will take "in the best of cases" two months late on site to deploy very high speed on French territory, or one million outlets not deployed in 2020 according to a study published Thursday by Infranum, former federation of industrialists public initiative networks.

"The sector has not stopped even if its activity has dropped, explains the federation which brings together companies in the digital infrastructure sector. We have climbed to 75% now and will have returned to 90% in September."

Reduced to less than half during containment, the deployment of the Very High Speed ​​("THD") plan will be delayed by "two to three months" minimum in 2020 according to this study carried out by the telecommunication strategy consulting firms Tactis and EY .

The "THD" plan aims for full coverage of the territory by 2022 in very high speed internet, fixed and mobile.

"Fortunately, all the maintenance activities were in full swing, which allowed people to continue working and to live well in confinement, said a spokeswoman for Infranum. However, there were many more alerts and major difficulties with deployment activities. Hence a delay of one million catches in 2020 and certainly still 500,000 in 2021. "

The loss of activity resulted in additional production costs for the sector, mainly in the construction and deployment of equipment. For the production of a fiber socket, these additional costs are estimated between 17 and 23% during confinement, and between 11 and 17% over the current period.

The study estimates the drop in turnover at 36% on average for these companies and up to 87% for certain categories of actors in the sector, yet "resilient", since only 11% of the actors questioned plan to lay off and "very little" liquidation.

To meet this objective, the sector is proposing a recovery plan, the cost of which is estimated at 11.2 billion euros, including 7 billion to be paid for by the public authorities.

During the confinement, digital uses increased by 30%, with streaming, video games, or home lessons and more than five million French people are teleworking.

The survey was carried out in May among members of the Infranum federation, in which almost half of the 210 representative companies participated.

The digital infrastructure sector represents 52 billion euros in turnover and around 280,000 jobs.

© 2020 AFP