PARIS -- France's presidential elections are still over 10 months away, but the political point-scoring has begun between the warring factions.
In the battle for votes, it is clear that technology issues will loom large on the agenda for candidates for the Elysée palace.
Both Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and incumbent, right-wing President Jacques Chirac –- considered the two main contenders for the presidency -- have been eager to assert their credentials as progressive, Internet-savvy politicians.
Jospin recently announced a five-year, $1.5 billion project to promote high-speed Internet access to "open the Information Age to everyone" in France.
The French government and industry will pool another $180 million to bring mobile-phone service to the 8 percent of the country that is currently outside the reach of the mobile networks.
Chirac, eager not to let Jospin claim all the credit for France's tech initiatives, has been using the presidential platform to present himself as a man au fait with the wider issues of information technology.
In recent speeches, the president has emphasized the "digital divide," suggesting that more could be done to promote Internet use among minorities and other disadvantaged groups. He is also calling for European-wide action against cyber-crime and greater efforts to ensure the security of Internet networks.
Financing for Jospin's Internet project will come from the state-operated financial services group Caisse des depots et consignations, which will invest $193 million. The group will make available another $1.3 billion in low-cost loans for other banks.
The high-speed Internet services will be developed using cable, satellite and DSL modem technologies, and France may seek to use the infrastructure of state-owned utility Electricité de France to extend the communications network throughout rural France.
For supporters of Jospin, this is further evidence of his commitment to putting France among Europe's tech elite. Critics, however, view the timing with suspicion and believe the plan is heavy on rhetoric and light on detail.
"The five-year $1.5 billion project that he has actually announced is a fairly modest broadband rollout," said Owen Kurtin, co-chair of the tech/telecom practice group with the multinational law firm Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, a member of the French-American Chamber of Commerce. "It didn't sound very well defined in terms of platforms to be used between cable/satellite and cable modems, DSL and so forth."
Yet Kurtin acknowledges that state-backed technological initiatives have a good track record in France where the government traditionally sets standards and eschews the type of open competition favored in the United States.
"What France gives up in terms of democracy and innovation, by not having different competitors trying to set different standards, must be weighed against the fact that these projects usually get done efficiently in the time allocated to them by the government," Kurtin said.
Colette Mazzucelli, a senior research fellow with the EastWest Institute in New York and author of a book on French and German politics, believes that Jospin's initiative is necessary to make clear France's need for better infrastructure so it can benefit from the communications revolution.
She concedes, however, that a sizeable percentage of French citizens might remain indifferent to the Internet, even with the nationwide rollout of broadband access.
"It is not clear to me if the majority of the population grasps the possibilities that communications technology offers or wants to participate in a phenomenon too closely associated with globalization," she said.
On the plus side, Mazzucelli thinks the forthcoming elections are the ideal opportunity for French politicians to use new media to target young voters.
"This could be a way to overcome popular apathy about politics and to close the gap that is widening between elites and the population about issues associated with European integration," she said.
Yet French politicians are notoriously slow to grasp the possibilities of e-democracy, according to a recent survey by Netpolitique.
Of 103 elected deputies who responded to the survey, only 45 percent thought the Internet would play an important role in the run-up to the 2002 elections. Only one in four deputies had considered the possibility of creating one's own website for the elections, and over half of the politicians admitted that they had no plans to do so.
While such indifference to exploiting the Internet for political advantage might raise eyebrows in the United States, Kurtin points out that the French establishment has always been slow to adapt to change.
"The trouble is that you have such a tradition of dirigiste government in France, which is trying to adjust to the Internet, which is intrinsically a national regulation-resistant, frontier-crossing means of communication and media, compared to the proprietary Minitel system. It's very nerve-wracking for French politicians to come to terms with that."
