Bouygues Telecom

Company Overview

Bouygues Telecom is a French national mobile network operator, and telecommunications services provider. The company was founded in October 1994 by French industrial conglomerate Bouygues S.A.

The company provided 2G GSM services over the 900 and 1800 MHz bands, and since November 2007 3G UMTS services over B1 (2100 MHz). 3G was upgraded to support DC-HSPA+ in April 2012, and rural coverage improved with the addition of B8 (900 MHz) in 2013. 3G 2100 MHz has since undergone partial refarming to LTE.

Bouygues 4G

4G was first implemented in a number of French cities in May 2013 over the B7 (2600 MHz) band. Following permission granted by ARCEP to refarm its 1800 MHz spectrum for 4G, Bouygues rolled out B3 (1800 MHz) LTE to 63% of the population in October 2013. A 220 Mbps LTE-A 2C aggregation upgrade was implemented in July 2014. 3C CA was added in November 2015 with the addition of a B20 (800 MHz). In May 2016 Huawei and Bouygues trialled LTE-A Pro which achieved peak data rates of 1.1 Gbps, using 4C CA, 4X4 MIMO, and 256QAM.

Bouygues Telecom 5G

The company has been actively testing 5G technologies since 2017, most notably testing in partnership with Ericsson where the company demonstrated data rates of 25.2 Gbps. In July 2018 Bouygues Telecom was awarded a temporary licence in the 3.6 to 3.7 GHz band, valid until September 2020 for 5G pilots in three cities (Bordeaux, Lyon, and Villeurbanne). An innovation agreement signed with Huawei in February 2018 would see 5G technologies tested over the following year. In November 2018 it was revealed Bouygues Telecom had installed a 5G pilot base station in Gironde, again using the n78 (3500 MHz) band.

In January 2019 Bouygues Telecom announced its first successful 5G call. The trial was conducted in partnership with Ericsson and Qualcomm in the city of Lyon. Lyon is the second city in which Bouygues Telecom has piloted 5G in France, following the launch of a 5G test network in Bordeaux during July 2018. The company has deployed eleven 5G sites as part of its Bordeaux trial.

Bouygues IoT

Bouygues Telecom launched its IoT network in March 2015 based on LoRa technology. The network launch was the culmination of 16 months of testing in partnership with Semtech, Sagemcom, Eolane, Adeunis, and Kerlink. The network uses standard EU 868 MHz frequencies.