Orange France, Free Mobile sign 2G roaming deal, agree to include 3G

French mobile start-up Free Mobile, part of the Iliad Group, and Orange France have signed a 2G roaming agreement and agreed to extend this provision to include 3G services. In a press release today, Orange confirmed that following a series of negotiations over the last few months, the two firms signed a national roaming agreement on 2 March 2011 for their respective 2G networks in France. Further, Free Mobile and Orange have extended the terms of the agreement to include their respective 3G networks. This part of the agreement will take effect once Free Mobile has deployed a network that covers 25% of the French population. Under the terms of its licence, Free Mobile is required to deploy a network that provides coverage to at least 90% of the population by 2018.