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By Suzanna Kerridge, 13 March 2000 00:30

NEWS The French Internet market is doomed to chasing the tails of its European rivals, according to the latest research from analysts house, Jupiter Communications. Olivier Beauvillain, associate analyst of European Internet strategy at Jupiter said France has been late to catch onto the Internet and is "still trying to make up for lost time." Though there has been substantial growth recently, he said, it is not growing at the same rate as countries such as the UK, the US and Scandinavia. "The gap is reducing but it will not go away. Even by the year 2003, France will only have a penetration rate of between 30 and 33 per cent, compared to the UK which will boast a 45 per cent rate," said Beauvillain. The number of French people online has only just passed the ten per cent mark - four years after the American market reached this level. The UK and Germany hit the ten per cent barrier in 1998, while Italy and Spain are not expected to reach this total until later this year - and only within recent months have the prohibiting factors been removed, said Beauvillain. "In the past, the traditional barriers were cost of access and the hardware, but also, big companies did not see the point of the Web. Now the lower price of PCs, reductions by ISPs, and a healthy French economy have all contributed to encouraging people to go on the Net." However, he remarked that the UK trend towards free Internet access is unlikely to be replicated in France. "Companies would not make money on this model in France. ISPs need to make money in Europe and it is too risky for them not to charge. But we have seen a substantial lowering of prices and now users only have to pay between FF100 and FF120 (£9 and £11) for 20 hours of access per month instead of FF350 (£32) as it was a few months ago," he said.