Both actually, France Telecom (now Orange) was not ready for broadband, their infrastructure needed an overhaul. At the same time they had the minitel where they were the middle man with a 45% share of everything for them, and almost all internet was through PSTN which made them money too. All in all: a multi billions incentive not to develop broadband internet.
At the time Orange mostly worked to block competitors while overcharging their own services. Ultimately they got sued, lost after years and paid a record fine amounting to a fraction of their profits.
So they continued engaging in this practice to this day with now quite a record of record fines for abuse of dominant position and such. Recently there was a year they made an unexpected bump in yearly profit because they had secured money to pay the next big fine which didn't happen.
Right now Orange is in the process of securing a monopoly on french fiber on public funds.
I don't remember that. I mostly remember that I could finally use by 8Mbit modem at 8Mbit instead of the 1Mbit or 500kbit (can't remember which) to which France Telecom was artificially capping it.
