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 results published by Orange and Bouygues Telecom confirm the French people's enthusiasm for Very High Speed Internet. Both operators saw their number of FttH subscribers explode in the 4th quarter of 2020 with gains of 9% for the former and 16% for the latter.

The end of the year 2020 has never been so successful for the incumbent operator. With 388,000 additional fiber customers in the last three months of the year, Orange had 4.5 million FttH Internet subscribers. This also enables it to consolidate its number one position on fiber even though its runner-up, Free, has not yet published its results.

Act 2 of the confinement has finally convinced many French people of the need for a very high-speed Internet line to cope with the repetition of this type of situation. In this context, Orange fiber being the most available, with 22.9 million eligible premises at the end of the year, was unsurprisingly in great demand.

Bouygues Telecom remains one notch behind Orange, but also Free, in terms of the number of premises eligible for its FttH offers: 17.7 million at the end of 2020. That's still 6 million more in one year, which, combined with the containment effect and the fact that it is moving further afield, is no stranger to the impressive growth posted by the operator.

Indeed, the Bouygues group's telecom brand has grown from 1 million to 1.6 million fiber optic Internet customers in just one year. This represents a jump of 60%, to which the fourth quarter made a major contribution, with 226,000 FttH subscribers joining the ranks over the period.

In total, nearly 40% of the 4.2 million households that surf at Bouygues have optical fiber, a penetration rate similar to that of Orange and Free. With such a buoyant context for fiber, Iliad's brand should undoubtedly break records in the fourth quarter, and approach the symbolic milestone of 3 million fiber subscribers. Answer during its 2020 review, scheduled for next month.

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Source : DegroupTest

The hot topic at the end of this year in the HSBB ecosystem: the quality of subscribers' connections to fiber optic networks. This is why the Objectif Fibre platform, which brings together the various organizations representing the sector, has published a practical connection guide, intended for "all the players involved, from near or far, in the deployment of FttH".

Listing good practices according to the (many) cases encountered in the field, this document provides "the technical recommendations applicable in each situation encountered and which have been agreed upon by professionals in the sector". The objective is to "do it right the first time" but also to aim for "homogeneity throughout the country".

The guide is addressed both to technicians and to all the actors concerned (principals, operators, engineering and design departments, training organizations or real estate actors) in order to guarantee the success of the interventions but also to prevent the resumption of work which can prove to be expensive or to be used as technical support of reference in the event of litigation.

"It's a whole ecosystem [...] that will be reconciled with a totally shared know-how," says Cédric O in the foreword to the guide. For his part, Sébastien Soriano writes in the preface that this "capital document represents an accomplishment for the entire sector towards greater harmonization and quality".

The president of the Arcep also considers that "it is essential for the durability of the networks that the operators reinforce the controls of their subcontractors in the course of their interventions". A reminder to infrastructure and commercial operators, who are currently discussing an amendment to their subcontracting contracts in order to implement this reinforced control, with the hope of achieving this by the end of the year...

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Source : DegroupTest

Over the past two or three years, the acceleration in fiber deployment has been clear, but the hardest part remains to be done: connecting the least dense areas of the territory. Despite the government's efforts - generalization of fiber by 2025 by mobilizing nearly 300 million euros to support the latest projects not yet funded - the account is not there. The reason: to serve scattered housing or isolated businesses, the cost of so-called long connections is very high and for some, it may even be prohibitive.

The answer must emerge from "negotiations with the various local authorities on the financing of their projects, with major demands that may not be able to be met exactly," explains Cédric O. Indeed, the Secretary of State wants "to match needs and subsidies to achieve the goal of 100% fiber in 2025. For the specifications, we'll see afterwards".

Non-standard connections are also available in less dense areas of private initiative. The question of the effective availability of fiber arises for homes and businesses that are isolated and/or difficult to serve. This is the case in the AMII zone, where Orange and SFR's commitment was to make 100% of premises connectable by the end of 2020. Including 8% on request because they are considered more complex to serve or not a priority.

If the health crisis has pushed back the deadline for these commitments, they will finally be reached in 2021 according to Nicolas Guérin, Secretary General of the French Federation of Telecoms. For Arcep, it is the responsibility of the State to ensure this. For Sébastien Soriano, President of the Regulatory Authority, "no worries" about SFR's compliance with the deadlines. However, he believes that there is "a landing point to be built with Orange".

A common ground could be found on the launch of offers for premises that can be connected on demand. This would enable a little over one million homes and businesses "set aside" during the initial deployment schedule to be connected within six months of the order being placed with an access provider. Nicolas Guérin, also Orange's General Secretary, explains that after having made massive deployment, the incumbent operator is now able to "move to a more qualitative deployment".

On the Arcep side, where "procedures are under way" to gauge operators' compliance with completeness rules, we are waiting to see if these offers will enable us to respond to the problems identified. In any case, Sébastien Soriano considers it desirable that these on-demand connection offers should first arrive in areas that have been scheduled for more than five years - and sometimes much longer - and where 100% of the premises are not yet connectable.

The question of the durability of the FttH networks also arises, particularly concerning the connection in Stoc mode. Access providers want to connect their customers themselves. While network operators are not against this, they are concerned about connection failures and the damage this causes. Both parties are not desperate to find new agreements before the end of the year, in order to clarify the responsibilities of each party.

All of this is under the watchful eye of the communities that own the public-initiative networks. If it is not surprising to hear elected officials thundering against the Stoc mode; it is more surprising to see a member of the government raising his voice on this very operational issue. "It's not possible," Cédric O. hammered out, "We are in the process of ruining what we are achieving" by strongly encouraging those concerned to solve the problem: "Either we know how to solve it intelligently between people of good will, or the State will have to make more complicated decisions, even if it means causing inconveniences in the system".

Stakeholders therefore no longer seem to have much leeway to save the Stoc mode. And to achieve this, the representative federations - InfraNum for the networks, the FTT for the operators - need to get around the table, thus pleading the case of several players in the ecosystem. This is also the opinion of Benoît Loutrel, commissioned by the French Secretary of State for the Digital Economy to study "securing the deployment and operating conditions for FttH networks". His task will be to re-examine the France THD program. The report he will produce in a year's time will "not be intended to put pressure on this or that actor, but rather to problematize and find a method", warns the interested party. It will propose ways to "transfer learning feedback" between territories, to "organize the interplay between public authorities and industry", and finally to "anticipate the resilience of networks".

On this last point, while burying is a common sense choice in the West Indies, it is no less relevant in metropolitan France.Climate risks also weigh on an air deployment that is anything but marginal, argues the Bank of the Territories. As part of its recovery plan, it plans to allocate additional resources to support local authorities in their landfill projects and secure access to major network sites. To this end, a call for projects will be launched in 2021.

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Source : DegroupTest

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

According to Reuters, the European Commission has just opened an investigation into cable imports from China to the Old Continent. The aim is to check the business practices of Chinese manufacturers, which their European counterparts accuse of selling at too low a price.

Following a complaint filed on 10th August by Europacable, the European cable manufacturers' lobby, an anti-dumping investigation has been launched. If the European Commission agrees with the complainants, it could lead to the imposition of customs barriers within 15 months.

Europacable believes that the conditions for marketing in Europe single-mode fibre made in China are unfair because of the artificially low tariffs applied. In its complaint, the cable manufacturers' organisation also asked to see this trend increase against the backdrop of the imposition of customs barriers on these Chinese products in the United States. This would risk redirecting to Europe the volumes not sold across the Atlantic.

An initiative echoing the alarm signal sounded a year ago by the union of French manufacturers in the sector. Quarter after quarter, Sycabel highlights the sharp drop in fibre optic orders for the French telecoms sector and the concomitant rise in Asian imports.

In its last quarterly report, the organisation recalled the difficulties that this situation was causing for a "French sector of excellence", while "massive investments have been made to support the deployment of the France THD plan".

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Source : DegroupTest