The European Investment Bank (EIB) has granted a €150mn loan to the Iliad Group, owner of French broadband providers Free and Alice, for the deployment of high-speed Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) connections throughout France.

The loan will also allow the group to continue extending ADSL coverage in France in the context of local loop unbundling, in order to "significantly extend" the availability of its triple-play offer by the end of 2011, via the opening of 600 to 800 new subscriber access nodes.

The plan anticipates the connection of 4mn households to the FTTH network by the end of 2012.