French operators Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom have announced that they have hit the one million customer milestone for 4G LTE.

SFR was first to launch its 4G LTE service in November 2012, with Orange following a month later.

Bouygues was the last to enter the 4G LTE arena, switching on its network last October.

The fourth operator, Groupe Iliad, has declined to say how many 4G LTE customers it had attracted to its Free Mobile service.

It unveiled its 4G LTE service in December and had a total of 7.4 million mobile subscribers by the end of September.

However, Iliad shook up the market in December when it announced that it would include 4G LTE at no additional cost to its customers on its main €19.99 monthly plan.

That prompted the three incumbent operators to react with a round of price cuts; Bouygues added 4G LTE to their no-frills plans sold without a contract while Orange also hit back by offering free 4G LTE services with their respective low-cost packages.

Meanwhile, SFR entered the ongoing price war last month by including 4G LTE in its budget RED offering.

All four operators are still building their 4G LTE networks. As of 1 January, Bouygues had activated 5,523 mobile antennas capable of handling 4G LTE traffic, Orange 4,244, SFR 1,294 and Iliad 824, according to France's ANFR spectrum regulator.

Orange claims its 4G LTE network covers 50 percent of France while SFR said its network covers more than 40 percent of the French population.

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