TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072291/0722001.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.9 KB | 147 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 38

FRANCE

Ambitions on a Grand Scale


Seizing the technological high ground, France positions itself
for a leading role in the closely integrated Europe of the 21st
century

By WILLIAM RADEMAEKERS/PARIS


    In much of the world, certainly including America, France
has long been looked upon as a country that knows how to
produce fine wines, elegant clothes and exotic perfumes but that
remains a bit of a joke when it comes to technology: a builder
of cars that look funny (Citroen), planes that few will buy
(Concorde) and telephones that don't work. Look again. France
is rushing into the 21st century with more ambition, imagination
and commitment than any other nation in Europe, maybe in the
world.

    In the far north, engineers are digging away at the
Channel Tunnel, at a cost of $13.5 billion, the largest
privately financed civil-engineering work of modern times. In
the south, crews are extending Europe's most advanced high-speed
rail system toward Spain and Italy. Everywhere workers are
lacing the country with fiber-optic cable and new power lines.
France is also the driving force behind Europe's innovative
strides in civil aviation and space technology. Paris is
headquarters for Ariane space, the world's leading launcher of
commercial satellites. Airbus Industrie -- a four-nation
consortium headquartered in Toulouse and run by a Frenchman --
is now the world's second largest producer of civilian aircraft
after Boeing.

    Most impressive, in contrast to the U.S., has been the
government's overhauling of the national infrastructure. In the
1970s, pressured by the oil embargo and fearful of falling far
behind its German neighbor, France decided to rebuild its road
and rail network, update the telecommunications system and
revolutionize its power-generating structure. Those projects
alone account for $250 billion in long-term investment.

    The projects have been designed, financed and carried out
by the state, drawing on the expertise of the private sector
but relying heavily on the leadership of specialized civil
servants. All involve large state-run companies and secretive
interlocking bureaucracies where public scrutiny is limited. All
are controversial. The nuclear power program, its detractors
claim, is a Big Idea gone haywire: too many reactors producing
too much electricity. The state-of-the-art telecommunications
network is heavily larded with gee-whiz gadgetry that is often
user-mysterious and wastefully expensive. And rather than
decentralizing the nation, the high-speed trains emphasize the
predominance of Paris.

    None of that is causing more than a hiccup here and there.
There is no better example than the way France has shrugged off
any doubts about the $110 billion nuclear program. Since 1977,
the state-owned public utility has built 53 pressurized-water
reactors to become the most densely seeded generator of nuclear
power on earth. France has quintupled its production of
electricity, cut its dependence on imported oil 40%, and made
power so cheap that domestic rates are 20% to 30% below the
European Community average.

    Remarkably enough, the nuclear building program has
withstood the two great shocks of the atomic era. The 1979 near
meltdown at Three Mile Island spawned new safety regulations.
The catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986 set off a public outcry in
most of Western Europe, forcing some governments to curtail
nuclear programs -- but not France. Five reactors will be added
to the national grid in this dec ade. The Superphenix
fast-breeder reactor, a joint venture with Italy and Germany,
is working, though it has been dogged by technical problems and
will never recover its $4.5 billion development cost.

    If the French had few options on the energy front, they
had no choice at all regarding their telephones. In the 1960s
the joke was that half of France was waiting to have a phone
installed and the other half was waiting for a dial tone. Lines
routinely went dead; when they worked, they regularly
misconnected and disconnected.

    Wisely -- and boldly -- the telephone company decided to
scrap the whole system and start over. Investing $80 billion
between 1975 and 1990, France Telecom now claims the world's
most digitized switching system, meaning that 75% of the lines
use digitally transmitted signals for crisper connections. A
telephone can be installed in a matter of days, dialing is
swift, lines are clear. Public telephones are everywhere.

    The revamped system is only part of the electronic
wizardry on display at France Telecom. More than 5.5 million
people have Minitel videotex terminals. The terminals, which are
free, provide electronic access to services like home banking
and do-it-yourself plane and train reservations.

    By 1992, France will have nearly 17,000 miles of
fiber-optic cable for transmitting anything from cable
television to videophone signals. Three years later, France
Telecom plans to begin installing video-phones in homes. The
decision to go heavily into videophones is a gamble along the
lines of the Minitel giveaway, which cost the treasury more than
$1 billion. But France is well positioned to be a major player
in tomorrow's telecommunications market. It has already signed
contracts with Mexico, Argentina and Britain.

    Among the grands projets, none is more spectacular than
the high-speed TGV (train a grande vitesse). Since the TGVs
first went into operation between Paris and Lyons in 1981,
cutting travel time in half (to two hours for the 290-mile trip)
by averaging 168 m.p.h., they have carried 140 million
passengers without accident -- which the French claim is a
record for a transport system.

    The great technical advantage of the TGV is that it is
compatible with existing tracks and station facilities; it moves
to high speed only on specially built lines outside the towns.
The TGV program achieved an American breakthrough when the Texas
high-speed-rail authority chose the French system over a German
competitor for a 600-mile high-speed route linking Dallas with
Houston and San Antonio -- a contract worth $5.8 billion on
completion in 1998. In the past few years, additional TGV lines
have been built toward Rennes in Brittany, Bordeaux in the
southwest and Le Mans in the northwest; by 2010 the government
will invest an additional $34 billion to add high-speed lines
to places like Lille and Strasbourg.

    There is a reason for the haste. By completing a
high-speed rail network several decades ahead of its neighbors,
France hopes to ensure its place at the hub of Europe's new
transportation system. Ferret-nosed TGVs and fiber-optic cables
may not guarantee success in the global marketplace of the
future, but they aptly symbolize France's determination to
maintain a key role in Europe's development in the 21st century.