HN user
IP geolocalisation sucks badly. For example OVH got only 1 DC (well to be precise one big room) in Paris. Kimsufi are hosted in their DC in Roubaix (north of France). They also got another one located in the east (near Strasbourg). You can also buy an IP located in somewhere else in Europe but linked to your server in Roubaix.
I don't know where this gif comes from but I have this source: http://ec.europa.eu/budget/figures/2011/2011_en.cfm So in terms of "Total 'national contributions'": DE: 21 189.9 FR: 19 075.6 IT: 14 517.6 UK: 12 918.3
It was published the 20/09/2012.
To give the entire picture, you should say that ADSL is asynchronous, and the 100/5 Mbps (and also 200Mbps/10 which I currently have, but only available in Paris) are offers offers are from "Numericable, which is a cable operator (and the only one) were/are really famous for their... err. problems (euphemism). In my last flat I was eligible to offers from "Free" ISP , and I got around 500Mbps to 800Mbps symectrical bandwith since it was only limited by the gigabit switch of the box. Sadly I had to move. And to be totally honest their peering problem (again euphemism since Youtube was slower than my smartphone with Orange in 3G) was killing the thrill. I got a faster "everyday" internet right now with 200/10/Mbps than during my "Free" days. (For the story Numericable has abandoned the peering part of the job and just buy bandwith to Level3, Neotelecoms, Telia and HE mainly. Their only job is to deploy and maintain a country wide backbone). During the 2000s France internet was really in advance, with the cheapest megabytes, but right now it tends to be like others countries :( The only good thing that remains is that traffic is always unlimited, in homes offers. The business market is still competitive. My point is I don't think €20B is really an answer, but that's not answering to how they are going to use it.
Like every ideas there is some good and some bad. It's stupid to think about FTTH and FTTLA in the french countryside because nobody cares about it. We just have to wait and see how much will be actually spent in a useful way. I'm confident because in the past, France showed that it can make a success in telco.