After being condemned for its commercial practices concerning its 4G and 5G mobile packages three weeks ago, Orange has been rapped on the knuckles again. This time it is its practices in terms of the application - and especially the presentation - of the two-year legal guarantee of conformity that has led the Direction Départementale de la Protection des Populations (DDPP) of Val-de-Marne to crack down.

The French administration reproached the historical operator for presenting this two-year legal guarantee, which was made compulsory in 2016, as an offer specific to the operator, and not as a legally imposed guarantee. Orange has therefore been required to display a message to remind the public authorities that this guarantee is above all the result of their work.

The operator is also called upon to put its commercial offers in order, in particular by adding this famous missing term "legal guarantee", which does not appear on its labels and displays in its physical shops. The administration also points out that the omission of this legal notice may lead Orange subscribers not to enforce their rights.

Far from being a first for the incumbent, the latter has recently been condemned for similar omissions. On 27 July, it was convicted of "knowingly failing" to present in "satisfactory conditions the restrictions on use" of 4G and 5G services. A fine of €15,000 was imposed by the Paris judicial court for having forgotten to present the actual availability of the 5G network on French territory, as well as the minimum speeds actually available for the new generation of mobile technology to its customers.

This sentence followed a writ of summons from the association Consommation Logement Cadre de vie (CLCV), for whom the omission of these details amounted to knowingly misleading consumers potentially interested in trying out the new generation of mobile technology and taking advantage of the explosion in speeds so much vaunted by the promoters of 5G.

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Source : ZDNet

The founder and majority shareholder of Iliad, Xavier Niel, has decided to strengthen his control over the telecom group by launching a share buyback operation. The aim is to take the share off the stock market.

This simplified takeover bid, aimed at holding all the shares not held, is set at 182 euros per share, i.e. approximately 60% above the last price. This announcement caused Iliad's share price to rise by 61% on the Paris stock exchange in the early morning hours of Friday 30 July.

The operation was initiated by HoldCo II, a company controlled by Xavier Niel. He holds, directly and indirectly, 70.6% of the company's capital and 78.7% of its voting rights.

Xavier Niel and Iliad's senior executives and historical shareholders, who have undertaken to tender their shares to the offer, hold directly and indirectly 74.9% of the capital and 83.6% of the voting rights of the group. "At the end of the offer, if the number of shares not tendered to the offer does not represent more than 10% of Iliad's capital and voting rights, HoldCo II will ask the Autorité des marchés financiers to implement a squeeze-out procedure," the company said in a statement.

Founded in 1999, Free's parent company has operations in France, Italy and Poland. Europe's sixth-largest mobile operator by subscribers, Iliad has 42.7 million subscribers and generated revenues of €5.9 billion in 2020.

"Iliad's new phase of development requires rapid transformation and significant investment, which will be easier to achieve as an unlisted company. Our ambition for Iliad is to accelerate its development to make it a leader in telecommunications in Europe," Xavier Niel said in a statement.

This is not an isolated operation in the telecom sector. Indeed, last January, Patrick Drahi, founder and majority shareholder of the Altice group, also delisted his European group (SFR, RMC, BFMTV...). The operation was intended to make it easier for Altice Europe to implement its strategy and to focus on long-term objectives, without having its quarterly performance scrutinised by the markets.

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Source : Challenges

On 26 June, Bouygues Telecom announced that it had "signed an exclusive agreement with Euro-Information, a Crédit Mutuel group company, with a view to acquiring 100% of the capital of its subsidiary Euro-Information Telecom (EIT) and entering into an exclusive distribution partnership". Little known to the general public, this operator markets its packages under the Crédit Mutuel Mobile, CIC Mobile, NRJ Mobile, Auchan Telecom or Cdiscount Mobile brands. Existing since 2015, it has its own core network and agreements as a virtual operator with Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR.

An agreement that "is fully in line with Bouygues Telecom's growth strategy". EIT is France's leading alternative operator with a distribution network of "more than 4,200 Crédit Mutuel local branches and CIC bank branches, 30,000 customer advisers" and a customer service team of more than 550 people.

As a reminder, Bouygues Telecom claimed a fleet of mobile rate plans excluding MtoM of "11.7 million customers at the end of March 2020" while Euro-Information Telecom announced that it had passed the "2 million customer mark" at the end of November 2019. A purchase that could therefore enable Bouygues Telecom to come back neck and neck with Free Mobile and its 13.3 million subscribers.

It is also specified in the press release that "the acquisition price includes a fixed portion of 530 million euros payable at closing and an additional portion of between 140 and 325 million euros, subject to the achievement of economic performance criteria and payable over several years".

Subject to the agreement of the competent authorities, the operation should be finalised by the end of 2020.

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Source : Nextinpact

On December 17th last, Arcep announced that it had agreed with the authorities on the specifications for the future 5G call for tenders. To afford the first 50 MHz blocks in the 3.5 GHz band, each operator will have to pay the fixed sum of 350 million euros but also meet the various commitments set by the authorities.

The remaining 110 MHz, in the band concerned, will be auctioned in blocks of 10 MHz. The starting price for the latter was set at €70 million. However, this should not be the business of operators. Indeed, they were campaigning for the authority not to set too high amounts in order to allow them to invest more heavily in the deployment of their future 5G networks.

The authorities should therefore obtain from this call for tenders, at least, a total sum of "2.17 billion euros for all the frequencies allocated". However, they have not been greedy in the light of the various 5G auctions organised by our neighbours, such as in Germany or Italy.

The specifications should be published in the coming days and will officially launch the award procedure conducted by Arcep. Candidate operators will then have eight weeks to prepare their application files.

Applicants will not be able to obtain less than 40 MHz of frequencies and will therefore not be able to obtain more than 100 MHz of frequencies in the 3.5 GHz band. The frequencies will be allocated for a period of 15 years and may be extended for a further 5 years if there is a subsequent agreement between the authorities and the operators concerned.

The examination of the applications submitted by the candidates should start in March. The Arcep will make its arbitrations and allocate the first fixed blocks of 5G frequencies at the end of March. The actual auctions will take place in May, while the procedure will be finalised in June.

However, the obligations on operators will not change. As initially planned by Arcep, the specifications provide for the opening of 5G in at least two cities per operator before the end of 2020. Subsequently, operators will be forced to deploy their services on 3,000 sites in 2022, 8,000 sites in 2024 and finally 10,500 sites in 2025.

But let's not forget the rural areas. Thus, 25% of the sites in the 3.5 GHz band "of the last two milestones will have to be deployed in an area bringing together municipalities in sparsely populated areas and those in industrial areas, outside the main urban areas", Arcep said.

The Authority also states that "from 2022 onwards, at least 75% of the sites must have a throughput of at least 240 Mbit/s at each site. This obligation will gradually be extended to all sites until 2030".

In addition, as provided for in European texts, roads are also a priority. Coverage of motorway-type roads will thus have to be ensured in 2025, before coverage of the main roads is planned for 2027.

Operators will also have to undertake to respond to "reasonable" requests from companies and public authorities, in order to provide them with "appropriate offers with coverage and performance, or, if the operator prefers, by entrusting them with its frequencies locally".

The authorities are demanding more cooperation between operators in order to ensure better indoor coverage of buildings and to ensure greater transparency on their deployment forecasts and breakdowns. Finally, operators will also have to undertake to welcome MVNOs to their respective networks "in order in particular to encourage innovation by all actors in the sector".

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Source : ZDNet

Kosc was unsuccessful against Altice and contested the decision taken by the Competition Authority. Indeed, seized on the occasion of the sale of Completel's copper network, the competition police last week issued its verdict: "there is nothing to define that Altice has committed a fault with regard to its obligations".

This is a major blow for the wholesale provider of telecom services to operators in the enterprise market, which has been denouncing SFR's parent company's late deliveries for months. This decision is all the more difficult to accept as its financial equation has become significantly more complicated.

But the operator does not intend to stop there since he "rejects", in a press release, the verdict of the Competition Authority and announces that he will bring the case before the Conseil d'État. A referral "motivated by the numerous irregularities that have marked the follow-up of the case by the Competition Authority, including the unexplained duration of its investigation in a context of urgency and the probable violation of its secrecy".

In addition, the company believes that the abandonment of Banque des Territoires (Caisse des Dépôts group), one of its main supporters, can only be explained by an understanding of the result favourable to Altice - SFR upstream.

Kosc warns against a prospect of consolidation that it now considers itself the "privileged target of a hostile acquisition" in view of its financial fragility. An operation that would "de facto close the business telecommunications market to the detriment not only of the ecosystem of hundreds of digital business service operators but also of the beginning of catching up on the digitalisation backlog of French SMEs and VSEs", warns the operator.

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Source : DegroupNews

In its newsletter on Monday, the Arcep college published an editorial to review the implications of a recent picket by the incumbent operator. Indeed, at the end of the summer, Orange submitted a Priority Question of Constitutionality (QPC) to the Conseil d'Etat in order to challenge the telecoms regulator's power to impose sanctions. But according to the college, Orange "[challenges] the pragmatic spirit of French-style regulation". With this initiative, the incumbent operator "does not attack the Arcep so much but attacks the French regulatory model more broadly", says Sébastien Soriano, President of the Arcep.

The sanctioning power of the Arcep is vital for the proper functioning of the current regulation, the college stresses in its editorial. In particular, it would not be possible to benefit from "the commitments that operators can make on competitive or territorial coverage issues", argues the telecoms police officer. "Without control and sanctions, these commitments would only be paper," he insists.

Very upset by the initiative of the incumbent operator, Sébastien Soriano said "I am not sure that Orange has measured all the consequences". The President of Arcep says that if his power of sanction were to disappear, then France would have to choose another regulatory model. Wishing to take advantage of the "synergy between infrastructures and services", it decided to leave the incumbent operator in charge of its network for its deployments.

Sébastien Soriano explains "We felt that Orange, because of its need to win back customers in the fixed Internet, had an incentive to invest in fibre", seeing it as a "positive market dynamic. But the counterpart of this choice is that the regulator must check on a daily basis that Orange is not taking advantage of this situation by giving itself an advantage on the retail market. This is called non-discrimination. To ensure this, regular monitoring and sanction procedures are required. Without them, we would potentially be forced to choose much more radical regulatory approaches..."

And ends by correcting: "It's not a threat, it's factual".

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Source : La Tribune

In order to launch the new generation of mobile networks, operators must be allocated frequencies by the end of the year. The first 5G antennas will thus be able to flourish and the flow rates will explode as early as 2020.

Across Europe, the 5G flagship band is the one between 3.4 GHz and 3.8 GHz - 400 MHz theoretically available to operators to water their customers with high-speed Internet.

The only problem is that, in France, this strip is already partially occupied by tenants who have no desire to empty the premises before the end of their lease in 2026. Among these cumbersome tenants are the Wimax licensees. This radio technology from the early 2000s was intended to provide broadband in rural areas through dedicated radio antennas.

A household is required and concerns two actors who are seated on 30MHz each: Bolloré Télécom (now Wifirst) throughout France and SFR in Ile-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

Arcep cannot therefore revoke their rights of use, even though frequencies are crucial for 5G. And Bolloré knows it. He is ideally placed today to recover. All he has to do is wait. The manufacturer can sit on it until 2026, use it himself to make 5G or even rent these frequencies to a third party.

But to make matters worse, the Arcep cut the 5G gang again a few months ago. The Telecom Constable has dedicated 50 MHz of his 400 MHz stock to "THD Radio" as part of the government plan to provide Very High Speed Internet access to all French people by 2022. And this until 2026.

On the Arcep side, it is stated that "there are no difficulties". Embarrassed, however, the regulator explained to Les Echos last summer that there could well be "only" 280 MHz of spectrum to auction... 30% less than the 400 MHz identified by Europe. Since the Authority has been studying its options, but nothing is moving.

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Source : Les Echos.fr

Announced on January 18th by Free's parent company, the acquisition of 75% of the capital of the French company Jaguar Network will enable the operator to strengthen its offers on the B2B market. These shares, previously held by the Naxicap investment fund, were sold for just under €100 million.

"This transaction is an important step for Iliad in its development strategy to address the corporate market by leveraging the very strong expertise and complementarities between the two groups and by partnering with a recognized entrepreneur," said Free's management after the acquisition.

This takeover should enable Iliad to develop its national network of data centers in order to increase its capacity to provide technical support to companies. However, this operation should not change the organization chart of the operator and host Cloud Jaguar Network since the company remains managed by its founder, Kevin Polizzi, who remains a shareholder with 25% of the capital.

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Source : ZDNet

AnnecIX welcomes today its 1st member! D-LAKE is a network operator and host of critical data founded by 4 telecom veterans. D-LAKE is above all an infrastructure provider in indirect sales and white label and thus allows resellers, integrators and ESNs to offer a portfolio of Telecom network and hosting services with high added value. The company is located in several Datacenters in the Rhône-Alpes region and is also able to deliver customers anywhere in Europe. D-LAKE offers VPN-MPLS, SD-WAN, LAN 2 LAN, IaaS Premium, Private Cloud, Secure Transit services.


"Due to its local dimension, AnnecIX perfectly meets D-LAKE's desire to provide better network connectivity in Haute Savoie. Connectivity to the various content providers connected to Rezopole's various IXPs will improve access latency to these sites for D-LAKE customers."

ASN: AS49028

Since 2009, Voxity is a Service Operator that designs, installs and maintains Telecoms solutions for the demanding professions (Private networks, Internet, Fiber optics and IP Telephony). Voxity is also the editor of Octopus, an innovative solution of enterprise Telephony and Unified Communication.

"We chose to join LyonIX in order to offer to our customers and partners the connectivity as resilient as possible. It also allows us to be as close as possible to the main actors of the region." - says Jean-Pierre Ramoul, a Voxity director.

Voxity is present at the LyonIX 3A rack

ASN : AS57103

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Find more information on the Voxity web site

At the same time a telecom operator, Internet service provider and operator of hosted services, AVM Up chose the cloud to resolve the problems that affect professional telephony, e-mail, SMS, fax but also the processing of the multi-channel flow of incoming documents.

"Recognized and experienced Expert, our areas of activity group together 3 fields:

software,  telephony for business and network."

 AVM Up is at the same time the expertise, commitment and quality! AVM is a human-sized independent 100% French company.

"This proximity allows us to exchange our know-how (Commercial, Customer service, R&D, Operator service and Networks (NOC), Administrative, etc.) and to bring a true support to our customers, with a high quality level, a high availability and a closely monitored security."

Why LyonIX?

• The effort to improve the quality of Internet speed and the reduction in cost associated with the bandwidth.
• As Internet operator, it is also interesting to be able to reach the market place allowing to sell and to buy Internet transit and/or all types of IP services.
• LyonIX also allows to interconnect directly to our customers to be as close as possible to them and guarantee them a higher level of security by the implementation of an additional path towards the platform.
• LyonIX is also a perspective to reach other IXP: France-IX, Equinix … whose future potential customers can become members.
• Finally, LyonIX can also be interconnected with other country, the United Kingdom in particular.

AVM Up is present at the LyonIX 2D rack

ASN: AS201246

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Find more information here: AVM Up

Since more than 25 years, C'PRO has been proposing solutions to companies centered around 3 sectors: printing and dematerialisation solutions, information technology and hosting, operator and telephony. Indeed, data are at the heart of the organisation. Intended to produce, sell or manage, they are essential for it to function correctly. Digital or physical, paper or voice, e-mail or video conference, these data represent a growing importance that needs to be managed, and they are derived from multiple channels...

 "OUR 3 COMPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES allow us to accompany our customers in the optimisation of their data flow in order to increase their capacity to manage this growing volume of data."

The C'PRO Telecom infrastructure is: 99.99% of availability of service, 11 core network nodes, 10 Gbps per node of interconnection, Internet transit and the ARBOR protection against DDoS.

"In order to constantly improve our availability and our connectivity, it seemed obvious to us that we needed to  connect ourselves to LyonIX, who is the main IX of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. This connection enables us to strengthen our offer, at the height of the leading actors of Internet".

C'PRO in some figures:

620 employees
20000 customers
31 agencies
130 M€ CA

3 datacenters 11 Operators Points of Presence (PoP) in France and abroad

C'PRO is présent at the LyonIX 2B rack

ASN : AS197033

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Find more information here: C'PRO