WiMax & French Politics

12:10 PM -- The French WiMax scene heats up as Bolloré Telecom announced Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) as a second supplier, along with Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), for its Paris pilot of a nomadic wireless broadband network at 3.5 GHz. (See Moto Pilots Paris WiMax, AlcaLu Deploys French WiMax, and WiMax Blooms in Paris.)

It's no secret, but the interesting thing about Bolloré Telecom is that its owner has friends in very high places in France. The WiMax operator is part of the industrial empire of French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, whose business interests span industries from plastics to advertising and media. And he is a copain of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

— Michelle Donegan, C'est La Vie Editor, Unstrung