Telecoms operator Niel has rocked France’s ICT industry for the past 15 years and captured 20m subscribers with packages including broadband, unlimited landline calls and multiple TV channels between €30 and €40/month, and mobile plans from €2/month.

So how does France fare in terms of rural broadband? Much worse than Scotland, according to 2016 figures from the European Commission. While basic broadband was available everywhere, less than half of French households had access to high-speed technologies – the lowest in Europe – and this fell to less than one third in rural areas.

Yet Basic Payment Scheme online applications have been compulsory for two years, and the country is now moving cattle registrations online. The French authorities routinely open centres where farmers without internet access can come and apply for their BPS online. While this is a once-a-year exercise, over the next four years the country is also planning to move all calf registrations, movements and health certificates online. In 2016, 72% of French calves were registered online. How to bring this figure to 100% when some farmers still can’t access the internet?

“Access to the digital livestock information system platform will be required to complete certain operations, such as looking up an animal’s official passport,” Laurent Duveaux, head of information systems at the French livestock monitoring body Institut de l’Elevage, told the Farmers Journal Scotland. “Coverage is not complete in France, especially in rural areas, but we have planned several replacement solutions that should help us proceed with digitisation.”

Options include farmers outside internet coverage areas retaining a paper copy of their records and allowing an agent to manage their animals’ online data, or developing applications transferring animal identification data to and from the national database by SMS.