Mayor in Alpine Silicon Valley wants France to hit brakes on 5G

'We shouldn’t just jump on a new technology for the sake of it,' says Grenoble Mayor Eric Piolle. — Alain Jocard/AFP

Grenoble is France’s answer to Silicon Valley, a tech hub where chipmaker STMicroelectronics NV is developing new wireless applications, Apple Inc has an imaging unit in a former chocolate factory and China’s Huawei Technologies Co is perfecting touch sensors.

For Eric Piolle, the mayor of the Alpine city and a rising star in the country’s Green party, making sure these companies have access to 5G communication networks is not a priority.