NII, EII...FII, THE FRENCH FLAVOUR FOR ELECTRONIC HIGHWAYS

摘要

France has a relatively specific position regarding the "information highways" issue. Decision makers and customers have been facing the "fibre-telematic" policy paradigm for 15 years. "Minitel" and "Plan Cable" were Government controlled projects, launched in the early 1980s. With mixed results (a success for the "Minitel" project and a failure for the "Plan Cable" project), French public policymakers should have learned from previous experience. Indeed, from this experience the present policies have inherited ideas about good and bad practices. At the same time, however, "l'air du temps" has a strong influence on the policy environment. The features of the 1990s, both in their macro-economic dimension (i.e., international competition, economic slump and public deficits) and in their industrial organization dimension (i.e., deregulation, the Internet and multimedia), have had a heavy impact on the recent policy that has been designed to cope with the challenges related to a "national information infrastructure" (NII) policy.