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

The alternative operator has just announced that it has raised more than €500 million in equity and junior debt from a pension fund to ensure the deployment of a fibre optic network and the recovery of Kosc.

Subject to approval by the regulatory and competition authorities, these two transactions are expected to be finalised in the fourth quarter of 2020. "These two transactions demonstrate our ambition in the fibre market in France and beyond. In a context of sector consolidation, these investments will enable us to pursue our growth strategy with the aim of strengthening our position as the leading independent operator", said David Elfassy, President of Altitude Infrastructures.

The takeover of Kosc should now enable Altitude Infrastructure to develop its addressable customer base in very dense and moderately dense areas, where the bulk of the Wholesale-only operator's business is located, which claims around ten million eligible outlets in these areas.

The alternative infrastructure operator is also planning a massive investment of 100 million euros over five years in Kosc. With this new fund raising, this welcome injection of capital now has all the green lights. As a reminder, the plan proposed by Altitude Infrastructure would enable Kosc to aim for a return to a positive Ebitda and a turnover of between 80 and 100 million euros in 2022.

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Source : ZDNet

The prospect of going out of business is slipping away for Kosc. "A business continuity plan will be proposed by Kosc's management and massively supported by Altitude Infrastructure," explains David El Fassy, the president of this group specialising in the deployment of fibre optics in rural areas.

The offer will be placed on Monday on the desk of the receiver, who will have to choose between it and possible disposal plans presented by other candidates, such as Bouygues Telecom, which has long been presented as a potential buyer.

"We propose to maintain the business and the services provided to customers. We are backed by Altitude, an extremely experienced family group used to providing wholesale only services. And we pay the company's liabilities. This is by far the best solution," argues Yann de Prince, Kosc's founding president.

As part of the continuation plan, the debts of 40 million euros would be renegotiated. And an agreement would be sought with SFR to settle any dispute.

The fact remains that the company is burning cash. The former shareholders - the OVH group and Caisse des Dépôts - had agreed to provide 4 million euros at the beginning of December to ensure operations during the recovery phase. The administrator knows that this cash box will soon be empty.

Faced with this cash flow problem, Altitude Infrastructure promises to invest 100 million euros in Kosc over the next five years. A large part of this contribution will be made out of own funds.  "Acquiring new customers is expensive, explains David El Fassy. Kosc's technical infrastructure is now efficient and supplies a lot of companies. Kosc's market is ahead of him. Our business plan foresees a return to operational equilibrium in 2022."

The existence of this continuation plan should reassure Kosc's employees, the dozens of customer operators, the companies that they themselves supply, and also the elected representatives of the Senate and the Assembly, who have taken up the challenge in recent months to criticise the Competition Authority's action on the corporate telecoms market. Indeed, faced with the very unsatisfactory access of SMEs to optical fibre and high prices, in a context of Orange and to a lesser extent SFR domination, the parliamentarians called for the rescue of the Kosc model. The rescue is on its way.

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Source : Les Echos

The Calls for Demonstrations of Local Commitments announced in December 2017 at the National Territories Conference were then presented by the authorities as "the possibility for local authorities to benefit from the deployment or extension of very high speed networks financed by operators' own funds".

Three of these AMELs had received a favourable opinion from the Arcep last March and an authorisation from the government. The first of these systems was finally the subject of an agreement signed on Monday between the operator Altitude Infrastructure and the Conseil départemental de la Côte-d'Or. By the end of 2022, the end of this agreement, 57,000 households will be connected by Altitude Infrastructure, including approximately 8,000 before the end of 2020. This AMEL will complement the Public Initiative Network set up by the Department to obtain 100% FttH coverage in the Côte d'Or.

Two other Calls for Demonstration of Local Commitments, in Lot-et-Garonne and in three departments of the South-PACA region operated by Orange and SFR, should follow the same path as the government announced last March. This system should "provide all French people in metropolitan France and overseas with a minimum speed of 30Mbits/s by the end of 2022" in accordance with the objectives set out in the France THD plan.

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Source : ZDNet