On March 10th, Internet exchanges around the world recorded spikes in traffic. There are two reasons for this record level: the increased use of the Internet linked to the spread of Coronavirus and the release of a new game Call of Duty.

One of the key strategies to slow the spread of the virus is social distancing and crowd avoidance. Many companies have already asked their employees to work from home. This trend is expected to increase in the coming days as the number of cases in the United States and Europe increases. At the same time, universities are turning to online course delivery.

These decisions increase their reliance on data networks that allow for video streaming and collaboration. Kentik, a network operating company, said it has "seen an approximate 200% increase in video conferencing during working hours" in North America and Asia.

This increase in business traffic collided with the release of "Call of Duty: Warzone" on Tuesday, March 10. The release caused congestion and delays on major Internet networks, as well as record traffic.

Frankfurt's DE-CIX, one of the world's busiest interconnection points, announced on Tuesday evening a new peak traffic of more than 9.1 terabits per second, an increase of 800 gigabits per second (Gbps) compared to two weeks ago.

"Whether it's exchanging information, streaming movies, playing games online, or the exceptional situation people are currently experiencing with the COVID-19 virus, Internet use is playing an increasingly important role," said Dr. Thomas King, DE-CIX's Chief Technology Officer.

Internet use is likely to increase further in the coming days as more and more companies adopt teleworking and school systems begin to offer online courses.

"As the world faces uncertainty, the digital economy continues to allow the global economy to continue to evolve. ... Teleworking via videoconferencing on applications such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco and Slack are key examples of our clients helping the world's largest companies enable and conduct business," said Marc Ganzi, CEO of Digital Bridge, part of Colony Capital's digital infrastructure business, which includes fiber, cell tower, and data center operators DataBank and Vantage.

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Source : Data Center Frontier

Due to too many uncertainties related to the Coronavirus / COVID-19 pandemic and as a preventive measure, Rezopole has taken the decision to postpone the Aperezo from March 18th. The protection of all stakeholders remains our priority.

The postponement date will be communicated to you as soon as possible.

We thank you for your understanding and hope to see you again very soon.

The Communication Department

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+33 4 27 46 00 53

This partnership between Orange and Free - known as the "passive mutualisation agreement" - will last at least five years and aims to share and build together mobile phone masts in rural areas. In other words, the operators would share masts and their operating costs, but each would graft its own radio equipment onto them. The territories concerned are located in a so-called "priority deployment zone" (or PDZ), i.e. rural territories where mobile coverage is poor or insufficient.

In general, this type of agreement allows operators to significantly lower their costs in order to cover sparsely populated and therefore unprofitable areas. However, the stakes here are a little different for Orange.

Today, any operator wishing to deploy a new tower in the ZDP is faced with a "prior consultation obligation". He must warn his rivals to find out if they are interested in sharing the site. This obligation appeared in January 2018 during the New Deal in order to put an end to the "white" and "grey" zones. But at the time, this provision was unacceptable for Orange, which considered it ruined all these efforts to differentiate the ZDP.

The Arcep then reviewed its copy and proposed that if an operator made an offer to one of its rivals for passive pooling in ZDPs that it considered reasonable, then the obligation of prior consultation could be waived. Orange therefore asked the regulator to lift this obligation. Free made the same request, but only for sites that would be co-constructed with Orange.

For its part, the Arcep has launched a public consultation to gather the sector's opinion on this subject but also concerning a possible removal, for all players, of this obligation.

The question of the pooling of mobile infrastructures has become eminently strategic for operators with the arrival of 5G next summer. SFR and Bouygues Telecom have long shared a large part of their mobile infrastructures in less densely populated areas. A similar agreement between Orange and Free would enable them to be more competitive. This is particularly true for Xavier Niel's operator, which is forced to make greater efforts to improve its national coverage.

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Source : La Tribune

The appeals lodged by Priartem and Agir pour l'environnement have just been rejected by the Council of State. The administrative judge considers that the character of urgency is not fulfilled and will rule on the merits of the case in the summer of 2020.

Four appeals had been filed in mid-February 2020 in which the two associations requested the immediate suspension of the decree setting the conditions for the allocation of 5G frequencies and the decree organising the tender procedure. They criticized the lack of an environmental assessment prior to deployment and its environmental and health consequences.

The National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (Anses) made similar criticisms in its preliminary report published at the end of February 2020. It explained that it regretted the lack of statistical data on the health effects of exposure to certain frequencies used by 5G.

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Source : L'Usine Digitale

Adista and Rezopole are pleased to invite you to the 63th edition of the Aperezo.

Meet on Wednesday 18th March at Avenue 45, from 6:30 pm to 10 pm.

Attention: the number of places being limited, registration is MANDATORY.
For organizational and security reasons, any person not in possession of a nominative registration confirmation * will be refused access to the event.

* Confirmation by name subsequently sent by e-mail.

I register

By registering, you agree, if you appear on the photos taken during the event, that they be published on our site, social networks and the site of our partner.

About our sponsor

Adista's strength lies in its ability to combine the know-how of a hosting provider, a telecommunications operator and a specialist in business IT. Adista is ISO27001 certified, has 31 branches and 500 employees.

Its offer covers 4 universes: Connectivity, Modern Workplace, IT as a Service, Digital Factory, with associated Managed Services:

• MPLS and SDWAN VPN, fiber, 4G, satellite technologies...
• Converged fixed/mobile IP telephony, Microsoft Teams/O365
• Hosting, facilities management, 5 in-house data centres and public cloud, cyber security
• Application Development

The names of the operators who will participate in the allocation of the first frequencies dedicated to 5G were unveiled by Arcep on 26 February. Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free have therefore applied. The four major national operators will compete in an auction, scheduled to start in mid-April, to win back as many frequencies as possible. And the stakes are high: those who win the most spectrum will be able to offer a better service than the others.

For the Arcep, the fact that the four major operators have responded is a source of satisfaction. For the president of the institution, Sébastien Soriano, it proves that the conditions of this sale "are reasonable". Even if some operators have shouted the opposite in recent months, believing that the government was financially too greedy. They also felt that the spectrum came with obligations to cover the territory - especially rural areas, which are much less profitable than cities - too large and costly.

No other telecom players applied for 5G, including the large MVNOs. The same is true for industrialists in different sectors. It must be said that the allocation requires the purchase of a minimum of 40 MHz of frequencies. This measure, which aims "to avoid the fragmentation of the spectrum" explains Sébastien Soriano, has de facto "set the bar a little high" for industrialists.

Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free, provided they comply with the required commitments, should each recover a block of 50 MHz at a fixed price of 350 million euros. 350 million. A battle will follow for the remaining 110 MHz, which will be auctioned in blocks of 10 MHz, but no operator will be able to win more than 100 MHz of spectrum in total.

The Arcep is due to determine in the coming weeks how the auctions will be conducted. Several modalities are still to be worked out.

It should be noted that during the auctions, operators will not be allowed to discuss and agree on certain common strategies among themselves, which would distort competition. If there is no change in the agenda, the regulator expects the frequencies to be allocated in June. Operators will then be able to start rolling out 5G in early summer, in July.

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Source : La Tribune

The partnership between the European pylon giant Telco and Bouygues Telecom is being further strengthened with the creation of a joint venture (51% owned by Cellnex and 49% by Bouygues Telecom). This new agreement concerns the deployment and operation of the operator's fibre optic network in France, with an investment of one billion euros by 2027.

This will enable Cellnex to deploy a 31 500 km network linking the roofs and telecom masts operated by Bouygues Telecom to the network of "metropolitan offices" designed to house data processing centres.

This will create "a real fibre optic ring linking several key elements of the fixed and mobile ecosystem, from fibre-connected masts to data centres and small cells", said Tobias Martinez, CEO of Cellnex.

Placed within the framework of a joint venture created between the two companies, the agreement will also cover the deployment of 90 new "metropolitan offices" by 2027.

In France since 2016 via its local branch, the group now has 130 employees responsible for managing a portfolio of 9,192 mobile sites throughout the country. This rapid growth has led Cellnex France to become a first-name customer for the other two sector champions, Hivory and TDF.

This is a good illustration of the group's strong ambitions in France and in Europe, where in 2019 - and for the first time ever - it will generate 51% of its turnover and 60% of its ebitda outside Spain.

This strategy is supported by a substantial investment by the Spanish ogre in France. 4.3 billion in France since the creation of its local branch. 4.3 billion in France since the creation of its local branch, making it Spain's leading investor and raising it to the status of a benchmark player in mobile infrastructures.

Cellnex France has also acquired 5,700 passive sites from Free through the acquisition of 70% of Iliad's TowerCo.

This strategy has paid off, since 67.5% of Cellnex's revenues are now derived from infrastructure services to mobile operators. The Spanish giant has announced that it has exceeded the one billion euro revenue mark in 2019, with 36,471 sites now operational in Europe.

The group recorded overall revenues up 15% for the year and Ebitda up 16% compared to the previous year. And with an order book that now stands at 44 billion euros, this is not likely to stop.

This performance owes a lot to an extraordinary investment by the Spanish ogre. It has injected no less than 8 billion euros into growth operations in 2019.

"2019 will undoubtedly have been a year of transformation with a prodigious leap in size and a qualitative leap in strengthening the group's position in its key markets, as well as an expansion of our geographical presence in Europe," said Franco Bernabè, the group's chairman.

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Source : ZDNet

Rezopole is pleased to invite you on Thursday, March 19th to the next IXPloration organized in its offices at 16 rue de la Thibaudière, 69007 Lyon.

This completely free event will be an opportunity for you to discover LyonIX, the IXP / NAP of Lyon.

Thus will be detailed during this morning:
- the IXP part, which improves Internet exchanges between users in a territory, reduces telecom costs, and secures and optimizes the network thanks to the multiple routes offered.
- the NAP part, which provides connected members with direct access to the operators present and their offers. We buy or sell any type of Telecom service with great flexibility.

On the agenda

9h00 – 9h30 : Welcome over a coffee

9h30 – 10h30 : Presentation of LyonIX :

                         - Economic and technical advantages

                         - Connection solutions

                         - Questions and Answers

10h30 – 11h30 : Visit to a LyonIX Point of Presence

 Register

Rezopole offers two days of training on March 24th and 25th to provide you with the basics of BGP routing and guide you towards autonomy. The BGP protocol, founder of the Internet, is necessary to interconnect to an IXP.
Combining theoretical courses and practical work, this workshop allows you to gradually and completely approach the different aspects of BGP such as peering and the use of Route Server. From the 1st day, you set up your first session.
You will also discover how the protocol works and how to configure it on different devices such as Bird, Cisco, Mikrotik, Quagga and the techniques to announce and filter networks in both IPv4 and IPv6.  
You will be able to manage and control your Public IP network. You will gain in reliability, independence and reactivity towards transit suppliers.

Price: 1000 € (Ex-VAT) per attendee during 2 days (lunch included)!

This training may be covered by your OPCO (Rezopole activity number: 84691581469).

Do you want to participate? Just send us an email.

The registration closing date is on March 17th, 2020.

Program

  Download the BGP training info 

Google's 'Dunant' transatlantic cable is scheduled to go live in 2020. Orange and Telxius, a subsidiary of Spain's incumbent operator Telefonica, have announced their association in this context. On February 18, Orange and Telxius, a subsidiary of the Spanish incumbent Telefonica, announced that they have joined forces to bring a new transatlantic submarine cable into service. Owned by Google, the 'Dunant' cable will link France to the United States in 2020. Orange will have two pairs of fibre and Telxius will have just one of the twelve pairs of fibre in the cable.

They will "offer and operate collocation services in their respective landing stations" in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez (west coast of France) and Virigina Beach (east coast of the United States), the two groups said in a joint statement. Telxius will provide Orange with a link from its landing station in Ashburn, Virginia. In return, Telxius will benefit from Orange's connections to Paris and other major cities in France.

With this agreement Orange will have more capacity between Europe and the United States. For the incumbent operator, this is an imperative to cope with the explosion of data traffic between the Old Continent and the land of Uncle Sam. For the French telecom leader, Dunant represents a significant investment amounting to several tens of millions of euros.

As part of this venture, Orange is also working with Google to provide it with terrestrial fibre optic links in France. This will enable the Mountain View giant to connect its data centres on both sides of the Atlantic. Over the past few years, it has invested in around ten of these arteries lying at the bottom of the seas, which are so essential to the smooth running of the Internet.

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Source : La Tribune

As expected last September, Iliad confirmed its choice to turn to Nokia for its 5G telecom infrastructure. A total of 17 million subscribers in France and Italy are potentially concerned to switch to this latest generation mobile technology when the time comes.

"The Iliad Group will install Nokia's latest radio access technology, AirScale, enabling it to take advantage of the first 5G networks while supporting 4G/LTE and 5G in the same radio access system," said the Finnish equipment manufacturer.

The technology supports different network topologies, from distributed, centralized and cloud-based RANs. The OEM points to its speed and ease of installation and 60% energy savings as well as backward compatibility with its Flexi base station controllers.

In addition to Iliad, Orange has also chosen Nokia - alongside Ericsson - for the deployment of its 5G network. In particular with its Single RAN technology coupled with network automation and management tools and associated professional services in the regions.
 

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Source : Le Monde Informatique

The deployment of 5G has become an international geopolitical issue. And the spokesman for the Chinese embassy in France is concerned about "recent reports in several French media that the competent French authorities are considering taking restrictive measures against Huawei in the deployment of 5G in France".

It recalls that the French President and senior officials have stated in this press release that, with regard to 5G, "France would not take discriminatory measures against any specific country or company, nor would it exclude Huawei".

These fears of espionage are unfounded for China. "In reality, Huawei's 5G equipment is totally reliable and has never presented any technical or security risks, nor left any 'back door'," said the spokesman.

China says it is counting on France "to take concrete action and create an open, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from all countries, including China".

Last Friday, Orange announced that it had selected European groups Nokia and Ericsson as equipment suppliers for the deployment of a 5ᵉ generation mobile network in metropolitan France.

Within the French telecoms sector, the prevailing sentiment is that the French authorities want to ban Huawei from the 5G market but will not say so publicly.

For its part, the European Commission has published its directives refusing to exclude the Chinese group, while allowing member countries to ban equipment manufacturers they deem to be "high risk".

Several operators say they fear that excluding Huawei will lead to delays and additional costs in the deployment of 5G.

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Source : Challenges

A new contract between the Region, the 4 Auvergne departments and Orange, signed 10 months ago, provides for broadband coverage of the entire Auvergne region by the end of 2020. Everything suggests that this objective will be achieved, as will the goal of making 91% of the Auvergne population eligible for fibre by the end of 2022.

In order to finance the equipment of rural areas, the Auvergne Region and the 4 departments had created a Public Initiative Network (RIP). Last year, Laurent Wauquiez renegotiated phase 3 of the RIP, getting the national operator to do "better (800 communes instead of 400), faster (2022 instead of 2025) and for less (137 million saved)".

A monitoring committee was then set up to ensure that Orange respects its commitment. It met for the second time on 7 February. Jérôme Barré, Head of Wholesale Markets at Orange, declared bluntly: "In 2019, we have hit the grand slam".

In figures: 50% more sockets connected in 2019 than in 2018, 166,000 customers already connectable, 48,000 customers connected, i.e. a penetration rate of 28%.

Since July 2019, connected households have been able to choose another operator, Free. Jérôme Barré also announced that the entire offer (with SFR and Bouygues) will be available in 2021. And this will be a first for an RIP.

On the business side, Orange is committed to "putting fibre everywhere". An offer at 250 € is proposed to them, whereas the previous tariffs were prohibitive, Laurent Wauquiez recalled.

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Source : La Montagne

Published on February 4th, a Tactis study shows that in peri-urban areas, around 30% more sites will be needed to offer a 5G service level equivalent to 4G. This is particularly true in rural areas, where twice as many sites will be needed to provide equivalent coverage, and up to three times as many to deliver a broadband service.

To arrive at these estimates, Tactis experts have simulated 4G coverage in several peri-urban and rural areas from existing mobile antenna sites. They then simulated what 5G coverage would look like based on these same sites. In its projections, Tactis uses only the 3.5 GHz frequency band. However, it is clear that coverage is much less in 5G than in 4G.

Why such differences? Because the frequencies used to provide 5G will not be the same as for 4G, and they do not have the same characteristics. "Current 4G deployments use low frequencies, which carry far, while the high frequencies that will be used for 5G deployments, in the 3.5 GHz band, offer a lot of throughput but carry much less far," explains Julien Renard, radio expert at Tactis. However, the Tactis simulations do not include the 700 MHz frequency band, even though these frequencies are low and allow much better coverage of territories. To explain this choice, Julien Renard points out that the 700 MHz band will not allow us to benefit from "all the promises of 5G". It is impossible, he says, to offer a real broadband service with these frequencies.

The densification of 5G networks in the heart of cities and the most urbanized areas, which are generally very profitable for operators, will certainly be a priority for Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free. On the other hand, the firm is looking at peri-urban areas and rural areas, which are less profitable. To acquire 3.5 GHz frequencies, operators will have to commit to ensuring that by 2024 and 2025, 25% of the number of 5G sites deployed will be in rural areas. However, there is no obligation to deploy new sites in rural areas. However, this will be an imperative for providing quality 5G coverage, according to Tactis.

The risk? A new digital divide between urban and rural areas. The latter could end up, in the long term, with non-existent or poor quality 5G networks. The solution to further densify the networks could come from a greater mutualisation of mobile infrastructures.

Operators are already thinking about this. In an interview with Les Echos, Stéphane Richard, CEO of Orange, judged that "the question of an advanced mutualization is raised. [...] Orange has signed (agreements in this sense) in Spain, Poland and Belgium. In France, some of our competitors already share their networks to a large extent; we are also thinking about it". The major manoeuvres could start as early as this year, once the 5G frequencies have been allocated.

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Source : La Tribune

On January 31st, the CNLL, the OSBalliance and the Cossfi laid the foundations of a new structure: APELL (Association Professionnelle Européenne du Logiciel Libre). "The idea is to create a umbrella association to carry the voice of Free Software companies in Europe in the broadest sense" explains Stéphane Fermigier, co-president of the CNLL.

A relatively light structure that includes members, supporting members (such as the Open Forum Europe or OW2) and associate members. The association will be based in Brussels and registered in the register of lobbies with the European institutions.

Two triggers were at the origin of this creation. "The first was the copyright directive and its impact on the development of free software, the battle over the forges. We clearly saw that it was necessary to have the voice of free software companies," observes Stéphane Fermigier. "The second trigger is the structuring of associations to respond to European issues, to collaborate on commercial projects, to have collaborative R&D," he continues.

This initiative also comes at a time when the European Commission is communicating a lot about open source and 2020 should be an important year in this area. "A major study is being launched on open source in Brussels and a major restitution event is due to take place in 2021," emphasises Stéphane Fermigier. He also mentioned other elements such as recommendations on good practices in terms of free software, policies to support innovation and work on ethics and digital sovereignty.

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Source : Le Monde Informatique