Do you mean for digital technologies or for specifically DSL? As I remember up to 1996 there was no commercial DSL in France, but there were excellent ISDN coverage (with rate up to 128kbits/sec with two channels). However it was quite expensive and when DSL was commercialized in France, it was cheaper at the basic rate of 512Kbits/sec. ISDN commercialization started around 1988 in France. In 1996 the Network part of FT started to think how to open the network to higher bandwidth, and it was not so easy because the internal backbone was built on ATM as it was used by Minitel users. Some years later (2002?) with declining Minitel revenues, FT decided to give the priority to DSL, with an adequate IP backbone.
(Source: It's only from my memories, I was involved in Rennes' 1987 ISDN experiment, network organization in 96-98 and commercialization of ISDN and later DSL, in Brittany, from 1998 to 2002)