Summary

  • Arcep’s decision 2026-0317-RDPI orders SFR to put 54 targeted mobile-coverage sites and 27 fixed 4G sites into service within six months of notification, then submit proof within fifteen days of each deadline.
  • The decision says SFR’s reports did not let the regulator reconstruct enough of the work: five mobile sites had no supporting documents, the fixed-4G group had no site under construction, and proposed withdrawals had not changed the formal lists.

Eighty-one unfinished sites. Two programmes. Two deadlines to build and two deadlines to show the work. Arcep’s February order gives SFR a six-month construction window for each group, then fifteen days to demonstrate compliance. The clocks sound simple. The record that starts them is not.

The regulator’s Decision 2026-0317-RDPI was made on 12 February and published on 19 October. It concerns two distinct obligations in France’s New Deal mobile programme, not one giant pile of interchangeable towers. The first is targeted mobile coverage: SFR was the designated lead operator for 224 locations. The second is fixed 4G expansion: 50 sites were initially identified under a separate programme, with ten later removed by a modifying order.

For the targeted-coverage group, SFR reported 55 sites still out of service on 12 September 2025. One entered service on 30 September, leaving 54. They were already eight to twenty months past their applicable original deadlines. Arcep examined SFR’s explanations and found the supporting record too thin to establish that the company had done enough to meet its obligations. Five of the 54 had no supporting document at all. Across the group, the file did not consistently provide a precise chronology of site search, studies, lease negotiation, permits, construction and commissioning.

The fixed-4G account was starker. Of 50 sites in the amended list, SFR said 27 remained unserved. Nine had signed leases. None was under construction. Thirteen were candidates for a future request to remove or modify locations, but no modifying order had removed them. A lease is a milestone; it is not a foundation, a powered radio or an internet service. Here, the gap between paperwork and a live site was visible in the regulator’s own table.

SFR attributed delays to electricity connections, administrative obstacles, local opposition, technical setbacks, difficult terrain and, for fixed 4G, planning limits, protected areas, difficulty finding a suitable location and dependence on third-party towers. Those explanations may describe real obstacles. Arcep’s point was about the evidence attached to them: the submissions often lacked dates, detail on the options examined, and a clear account of the steps taken to resolve each blockage.

An obstacle without a timeline leaves the regulator unable to tell whether a company is working through a hard problem or letting a file age in a drawer.

That is why the order’s second clock matters. SFR must finish the required service within six months of notification. It then has fifteen days after the relevant deadline to justify compliance to Arcep’s dispute, investigation and enforcement formation. The proof obligation forces the deployment story into a testable record: which location, which technical solution, when the site search began, what permission or power connection was pending, what changed, and when service became available.

Arcep applied that structure separately to both annexes: 54 targeted-coverage locations in one, 27 fixed-4G locations in the other. The groups share a deadline formula, not a legal identity. Treating them as one “81-site backlog” would hide different service obligations and different lists. It would also make it harder to check whether one group is progressing while the other remains stuck.

The regulator said six months was reasonable in light of SFR’s production capacity and its previous delay. It pointed to 456 new mobile sites deployed in metropolitan France in the third quarter of 2025. That comparison is not proof that every difficult location can be built at the same speed; it is Arcep’s stated basis for setting the deadline. The decision also leaves room for SFR to document exceptional difficulties and show that it used the means needed to resolve them.

The order is a formal notice to comply, not a fine. Arcep said its broader investigation into other possible breaches of SFR’s coverage obligations would continue. The public decision does not state when it was notified to SFR, so the exact calendar date for the six-month construction deadline cannot be calculated from the published document. That missing date is now the first item any outside tracker needs.

For communities waiting on coverage, the practical scoreboard is not a lease count or a future-year estimate. It is a location that appears on the order, a sequence of dated actions, a site that enters service, and evidence submitted before the fifteen-day window closes. The paperwork has been given its own deadline because the tower alone cannot tell a regulator how it got there.

Primary documents: Arcep’s 19 October publication notice; Decision 2026-0317-RDPI (12 February 2026); Arcep’s New Deal Mobile monitoring page and open-data links.