Last November, the European Commission approved the acquisition of Covage by SFR FttH. The company is now called Xp Fibre and has a portfolio of 7 million fiber optic connections. It includes 24 Public Initiative Networks (PINs), operated under public service delegations (PSDs); five AMEL zones and two proprietary networks; and 2.6 million outlets in AMII zones.

Its role remains broadly the same as that of SFR FttH, i.e., network deployment, operation and marketing of its own outlets, or through public partnerships, depending on the areas to be equipped.

In detail, SFR FttH already had 5.5 million outlets throughout France, notably through 16 public service partnerships, three AMEL zones and the AMII zone. With this acquisition, Xp Fibre now has 8 DSPs and 4 proprietary networks (including two AMEL).

Each of the deployment areas will benefit from a fiber optic network open to all commercial operators, Xp Fibre being an infrastructure operator. The general public, businesses and local authorities will all be able to subscribe to the access provider of their choice.

"The new entity, made up of the assets of SFR FttH and those resulting from the acquisition of Covage, gives rise to a new, even more ambitious player in the field of fiber for territories and a key player for commercial operators," commented Lionel Recorbet, President of Xp Fibre.

The capital of the new entity remains composed of the Canadian fund OMERS (one of the main defined benefit pension plans in Canada), Altice France and the infrastructure funds of the Axa and Allianz groups, as was that of SFR FttH.

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Source : Clubic

In July 2020, Free approached the Arcep, asking it to specify the conditions of access for market players to SFR's FttH network in less dense private initiative zones (AMII). Iliad's subsidiary demanded that SFR's tariffs for access to the terminal part of its network be regulated, limiting any increase to the indexation provided for in the mutualization contract between the two operators and making any change beyond this scale subject to the signature of a rider "negotiated in good faith".

This is a hot topic, because already last April, the Arcep said it was ready to put the "points on the i's" in the issue of the increase in connection rates to SFR's fiber network in private areas. In fact, the Authority had already demanded from the mark with the red square the cancellation of the increase in its tariffs in force since the beginning of the year 2020 after having been seized by Bouygues Telecom last winter.

Free, which therefore demanded the revision of the co-financing rates demanded by SFR, in the AMII zone, so that they do not exceed €5.12 per line and per month (or €513.6 per line for the non-recurring rate) for a co-financing up to 20%.

This request was accepted by Arcep, which asked SFR to adjust its tariffs in the AMII zones but also in the AMEL zones. The Gendarme des Télécoms justifies this position by stating that SFR's infrastructure branch "has not produced any specific elements that would allow it to understand its costs" and believes that increases in access tariffs must "be justified by cost elements".

As in the dispute between Bouygues Telecom and SFR, the Arcep has enjoined the brand with the red square to return to its co-financing rates applied before February 2020. However, it has the possibility of adjusting them in a much more modest manner by means of an amendment. This decision was eagerly awaited by certain players in the sector, for whom the survival of the principle of sharing the terminal part of the Orange and SFR fiber networks, in force since 2008, was at stake.

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Source : ZDNet

To ensure the quality of fiber deployment, the government will launch a mission to monitor FttH deployments.

The most visible aspect of the degradation of the state of fiber networks is in some street cabinets. The model of entrusting the connection of subscribers to Internet service providers, in a relationship of subcontracting to network operators, is regularly blamed for these setbacks. And the various protagonists are still struggling to come to an agreement to put an end to the mess.

Some observers also point to the original choice to move the points of pooling as close as possible to residential or professional premises, to the detriment of a more centralized and therefore more secure architecture.

But beyond the state of the cabinets, the upstream part is also in the sights of this major control operation that the government intends to launch.

Indeed, the initiative is based on a set of alerts, notably concerning the undersizing of transport cables. In some places, the amount of lightpaths available would be insufficient to serve all users.

There are also concerns about imported fibre optics, which do not appear to be fully satisfactory.

The vulnerability of fibre networks to climatic hazards also explains this renewed vigilance.

The objective stated in the mission letter of this monitoring operation: "to better secure deployments and operating conditions on public-initiative networks" (RIP). And to find "remedies" for potential problems identified.

Fiber networks deployed by operators using their own funds, in very dense areas or in less dense areas of private initiative (AMII in particular), would therefore be excluded from the scope of this monitoring mission.

Will it be a matter of leaving it up to the operators to ensure the proper functioning of their own network, while the State would only do so on RIPs, where public funds have been committed?

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Source : DegroupTest

The operator has launched the marketing of its Very High Speed subscriptions, up to 1 Gb/s, in many cities. To do so, it relied on SFR's FttH network. These are AMII zones, moderately dense zones, where the red square operator is the only one to manoeuvre. It installs a shared optical fibre network there, which other ISPs will then be able to use.


More than 50 cities in some 15 departments are affected by the arrival of Bouygues Telecom's offers. The operator is thus following in Free's footsteps, which has been investing in these territories for several months now.

Bouygues Telecom, which has not been present so far, seems to have launched a vast marketing effort since the end of September. In particular on the outskirts of major cities such as Calais, Cannes, Marignane, Nantes, Toulon, Toulouse and Orléans as well as in several major municipalities in the Ile-de-France region.


In these regions, competition will therefore be somewhat fiercer since at the beginning of the year only SFR, RED, Orange and Sosh offers were available. For several months now, Free has been growing in power, so it is not surprising to see Bouygues Telecom complete the picture. This is to keep pace with these territories with hundreds of thousands of potential customers.


At the same time, Bouygues Telecom is whipping up new ground in major cities. At the beginning of 2019, its very high speed Internet offers were still absent from many large cities located in so-called very dense areas (ZTD). But the situation is gradually improving with the arrival of its fibre in Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Poitiers, Rennes, Rouen, Saint-Etienne, Toulon or even some Ile-de-France municipalities such as very recently Fontenay-sous-Bois.

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Source : Ariase