SNCF Réseau's new subsidiary, Terralpha, has arrived to market the bandwidth offered by the more than 20,000 km of fibre that snake through mainland France under the train tracks. As the fibres are pulled from town to town, they do not suffer from the slowdowns caused by the connections that operators put on each branch line.

In addition, this fibre network provides a national alternative to the network of the four major operators. The 2,000 alternative operators will now be able to interconnect a head office in Lille with its branch in Marseille, without having to wait for weeks for authorisation, without having to pay the high price imposed by their national competitor. And, above all, with better latency.

These more than 20,000 kilometres of fibre were already available for hire. But it was a case-by-case process: Since SNCF Réseau only provides 100 Gbit/s links, it was up to its customer to install a router at each end to carry its traffic. And apart from the major operators, no one knew how to install a router on these fibres.

To connect, Terralpha chose to partner with the Telehouse chain of colocation data centres. "Our strategy is to be present in the telecom marketplaces. That is to say, in the rooms reserved for the interconnections of operators in the data centres. The most important ones are on the TH2 campus of Telehouse in Paris, which brings together 300 telecom operators," argues Gabriel Chenevoy, Terralpha's CEO.

Especially since TH2 has a state-of-the-art computer system that monitors the 50,000 fibres running through its operator rooms one by one. The curvature and path of each fibre would be carefully studied.

Apart from Orange and SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad are also starting to sell bandwidth on their national networks to alternative operators. Kosc was previously the only independent infrastructure operator through which local providers could offer national connectivity to their customers. It is therefore the one that Terralpha is now competing with. After financial setbacks, Kosc was finally bought out a year ago by Altitude Infrastructure, an ex-alternative operator that has refocused its activity on fibre installation.

Although Altitude Infrastructure enjoys a good image with local authorities, its challenge remains to link together fibre segments scattered over the territory. This is where Terralpha claims to have a head start.

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Source : Le Mag IT

At the end of 2020, Brussels validated the acquisition of Covage by SFR under certain conditions. Indeed, in order to avoid competition problems, the operator with the red square had to sell part of its networks. Altitude Infra and Axione had expressed their interest and had positioned themselves to acquire all the networks concerned.

In a joint press release, Altitude Infra, which manages 19 RIPs and claims to have deployed 1 million outlets, and Xp Fibre, the entity created by the merger between SFR FTTH and Covage, with 7 million outlets deployed, announced that they had entered into exclusive negotiations for the full acquisition of the assets. The transaction is expected to be finalised in the second half of 2021, following approval by the European Commission.

The 25 networks concerned correspond to Covage's fibre optic local loop activity in the Public Initiative Networks. This represents 95% of the operator's FttO (Fibre to the Office) activity. Among them, 15 Covage subsidiaries active almost exclusively on the wholesale market for capacity services on BLOD (Dedicated Optical Local Loop) and 10 Covage subsidiaries active marginally on the wholesale market for capacity services on BLOD and which also deploy FttH networks.

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Source : Univers Freebox

InfraNum has just announced "a major agreement between operators to improve the quality of connections and guarantee the durability of fiber networks in France". The quality of the operations of connection to the optical fiber is currently under fire, the federation of digital infrastructure manufacturers is trying to reassure. A framework has therefore been put in place and will be set out in numerous agreements between access providers and network operators... some of which have yet to be signed.

For 18 months, infrastructure operators (RO) and commercial operators (CO) have been working together to draw up these new Stoc contracts (for commercial operator subcontracting). The aim is to improve an operating mode that everyone is keen to maintain: the Internet access provider (OC) connects its subscriber, as a subcontractor of the network operator (RO).

Indeed, in the face of the influx of demand, its defenders argue that this is the most efficient way to operate in order to make things happen quickly. But not to do well, retort the detractors of the Stoc mode denouncing degradation, connection failures or access cuts.

The Stoc mode is therefore striving to make its transformation, "to improve the quality and safety of interventions, the processes and speed of connection, and the training of those involved". InfraNum therefore announces that discussions between network operators and ISPs have led to progress in three areas:

• "Improving the safety and quality of interventions", with in particular the "realization of joint audits and the introduction of sanctions that can go as far as the exclusion of a subcontractor in case of contractual failure".
• "Increase transparency" through a system for monitoring interventions and "control by an artificial intelligence system" on the side of the network operator".
• "Rebalancing maintenance costs: between ROs and COs, collective coverage of network restoration costs, according to a distribution key approved by the Arcep".

While the industry federation assures that "the first signatures have already taken place for rapid generalization and immediate implementation," it concedes, however, that this "new contractual framework" has not yet been fully deployed.

For example, network operators Axione and Altitude Infra have signed "with the majority of OCs", while things are "on the right track" for TDF. On the other hand, there is nothing on the progress of discussions with Orange and SFR, which have the particularity of being both commercial operators and network operators, particularly in public and private initiative zones.

A little more patience therefore before this new major agreement is implemented in unison on all networks and between all operators and ISPs. The interest for stakeholders is that it "avoids imposing a regulatory decision". The Arcep is currently conducting a consultation on the subject.

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Source : DegroupTest

The wholesale operator, which took control of Kosc in the summer of 2020, is now preparing to relaunch it. And Kosc's rebound is bound to be closely scrutinised by the various players in the sector.

David El Fassy, the CEO of Altitude Infrastructure - now renamed Altitude Infra, explains, "For us, the acquisition of Kosc is an unprecedented opportunity to expand our client base in areas other than those where we have traditionally operated, particularly in AMII or urban areas. [...] After beating Kosc's order record in September, we now wish to enrich its catalogue of addressable FttE and FttO products, on which Kosc has not had a strong presence until now". Other objectives include the development of Kosc's coverage in SFR's AMII zones, with the eventual ambition to push for full unbundling of the wholesale operator.

Altitude Infra wants to make Kosc's API the most complete aggregator of telecommunications infrastructures, both for its major accounts (such as OVH) and also for VSEs. Indeed, the latter constitute the most important economic development basin of the corporate telecoms market.

To achieve this, the wholesale operator is planning a massive investment of 100 million euros over five years in Kosc. Xavier Grossetete, who has been working for Jaguar Network since 2017, has been appointed sales director and will be responsible for boosting the recruitment of new customers.

"With Kosc, we are becoming the operators' one-stop shop, with coverage throughout the country," says David El Fassy, confirming his intention "to invest and have a long-term influence on the fibre optics market, but also to develop new offers and services for companies". The plan proposed by Altitude Infra should enable Kosc to return to a positive Ebitda, as well as a turnover of between 80 and 100 million euros in 2022.

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Source : ZDNet