Fibre optic failures: also the fault of subscribers?
In an interview with La Gazette Val d'Oise, Rachid Adda, director of Val-d'Oise Numérique, the union in charge of deploying fibre in the department, believes that "some individuals should stop changing operators every six months, to benefit from the cheapest subscription". According to him, "this mania for changing subscriptions represents up to 40% in certain districts" and would contribute to the current situation. He stressed that "breakdowns on the network only represent 5%".
Rachid Adda denounced the precariousness of the workers at the end of the chain. "The operator pays a subcontractor for interventions. But the subcontractor himself calls in another technician whom he pays less, while pocketing the operator's commission. This low-cost technician intervenes for 30 to 50 euros. He therefore needs to carry out a maximum number of repairs. That's why I am indignant about the outsourcing of interventions", he explains.
The director of Val-d'Oise Numérique also deplores the problem of the skills of the people working in the field: "It only takes 10% of the technicians to be poorly trained for the operation to fail".
It also denounces bad practices in the field. While the network is oversized, with, for example, a box containing 12 connections for 10 homes and 10 metres of optical fibre inside to leave room for manoeuvre in the case of repairs, some subcontractors would go as close as possible, even if it meant saturating a box, or would not warn when they had exhausted the available room for manoeuvre. Rachid Adda also reports a greater incidence for ground floor subscribers in buildings and explains: "the technician prefers to connect the subscriber on the 3ᵉ to the one on the ground floor, so as not to have to go upstairs". Another case: connections during inclement weather. "Some people, very often in winter, do not try to open a new line from the cabinet. They simply connect the subscriber to another subscriber... who they then disconnect," he says.
The director of Val-d'Oise Numérique also mentions the case of cabinets that have to be refurbished because of the numerous interventions, or even changed because of acts of vandalism. "A cabinet repair costs 100,000 euros. We do two a year. Recently, we changed three in six months in the same municipality," he explains.
Source : Univers Freebox