French Prime Minister's FF4bn IT investment branded 'drop in the ocean'

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin is spending FF4bn (£385m) promoting the internet with a move to get schools online and to improve training, but analysts have described the announcement as 'window dressing'.

Over the next three years, Jospin will spend FF3bn (£289m) equipping schools, universities and libraries with internet access. In addition, FF1bn (£96m) will be invested to create 7,000 public internet kiosks.

Jospin said it was time France "put this new tool at the service of democracy, justice, solidarity, and it is necessary for us, above all, to take care that these riches are distributed".

To help combat the growing skills shortage in France, Jospin pledged FF1bn to retrain professionals and the unemployed in multimedia, internet and data processing skills.

Explaining the motive for the investment, Jospin said he wanted to reduce the gap between different sectors of society.

But Ashim Pal, senior analyst at Meta Group, dismissed the announcement as window dressing.

"It's a decent amount of money but in terms of the infrastructure needed for wide spread internet access, it is a drop in the ocean. It's a good start but a lot more noughts are required on the end of this amount before it will really be enough."

He claimed instead France needed to concentrate on deregulating the telecoms industry to make access cheaper. Promoting e-government will also get people online, he said.

"The French are in good shape when it comes to e-government. They are focused on the idea of citizen relationship management instead of customer relationship management to build close links between the public and the government. France is well ahead on this as they have had Minitel for a long time."

Olivier Beauvillain, analyst at Jupiter Communications agreed, and claimed the French government had to address more basic issues.

"In Europe you see every country saying it wants to be the leader of the internet, but you cannot create a law making you the leader - you need to lower access and PC costs to drive internet penetration. In France there is 19.5 per cent VAT on PCs, which is higher than other European countries and the US.

"While France Telecom has been pretty much protected by the government from competition, this is changing. But there are still a lot of hurdles to get over, such as reducing the price to go online and for local calls before there is access for all," he added.