On 20 July, the operators submitted their plan of attack to improve the quality of connections to the government. For the French Federation of Telecoms (FFT), there is no question of letting these malfunctions damage the image of fibre and hinder its deployment in the short and medium term.

This opinion is shared by all telecom stakeholders. "Good quality [of connections] is essential to ensure the operation of FttH networks under good conditions, to ensure their sustainability and to limit the additional costs associated with recovery or reinstatement work," Arcep points out. The same is true of operators, who regret that damage to network infrastructure, whether deliberate or not, does not harm their image or that of fibre.

Last May, the infrastructure operators had already made a series of commitments to improve the quality of connections by changing the subcontracting contract (STOC mode) that governs the market. Now it is the turn of commercial operators to tackle the problem head on. In this white paper, they propose various ways to put an end to "noodle dishes".

In addition to training their field staff, the operators also advocate the widespread use of a new form of engineering within shared cabinets. This new architecture, known as the "M" shape, "makes cross-connection more fluid and intuitive, thanks to a colour code for the paths". The latter are thus campaigning for the generalisation of this system on a national scale.

In addition, and in order to allow for a better audit of connections already made, the operators wish to generalise a new type of photographic report, "which provides for time-stamped photos to be taken before and after each intervention, making it possible to control the quality of the work carried out by the participants and to rapidly detect the appearance of defects". Launched at the beginning of the year, the tool nevertheless suffers from a few limitations: "the controller's inability, whether human or mechanised based on artificial intelligence, to ensure that the optical positions occupied are in accordance with what is planned". This is a major shortcoming, as it is common for this malfunction to lead to bottlenecks in the cabinets.

The operators also want to rely on an interoperator application, called "e-Mutation", which aims to help technicians improve their visibility of the lightpaths used in a given cabinet. They also announced the forthcoming launch of an interoperators IT tool to track a fault from notification to resolution.

The last point concerns the National Address Database (BAN), a public database that aims to reference the address of all premises in France. The database, which can be used in the form of an API by operators, has been criticised for its shortcomings, particularly in rural areas. "It is essential that local authorities quickly acquire a complete address database," explain the operators, who rely on this information in their connection operations.

Will this put an end to the proliferation of noodle dishes? At least that is what the operators are hoping for. Especially since the timing is critical for the adoption of fibre, while the rollout of very high speed broadband continues in all directions in metropolitan France. Fibre professionals expect to deploy 6.2 million sockets in 2021. This should exceed the government's objectives in this area, with forecasts of 87% of homes connected to fibre in 2022, instead of the 80% initially desired by the public authorities.

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Source : ZDnet

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

Organized by Mon Territoire Numérique every year in March in Deauville, the RIP Estates General finally took place in video format. The meeting of public initiative networks made it possible to gauge the impact of the health crisis on the very high-speed broadband projects carried by local authorities.

At the end of March, InfraNum warned that a complete halt to the fibre optic deployment projects would be a "catastrophe" likely to cause 12 months of inertia. Today, the Federation of Digital Infrastructure Industrialists is breathing - a little. Its president, Étienne Dugas, says "We have worked on the ordinances, on the various decrees with more or less success" in order to "avoid the complete shutdown of the industrial tool, which is done".

Overall, activity fell, on average, to around 30% of nominal production during containment. This made it possible to keep the industrial facilities in operation, although the situation varied greatly from one region to another.

Today, the time has come for a return to load: 50% activity last week, 70% this week. At any rate, these are the figures announced by Julien Denormandie, the French Minister for Urban Affairs and Housing, who has been in charge of HSBB issues since 2017. But Etienne Dugas warns that they should be taken with caution: "In terms of productivity, we are still far from the rates we could have had previously".

This observation is corroborated by Lionel Recorbet for SFR FttH: "We are going to have a lot, a lot of difficulties to get back to 100%". Cyril Luneau, Director of Community Relations at Orange, also warns that a return to pre-crisis fibre deployment levels "is not for now". The Covid episode will have "a serious and profound impact on the calendars and milestones for the end of this year, and no doubt for 2022", i.e. the deadlines for the operator's commitment in the AMII zone.

The operators therefore warn that at this stage it is difficult to quantify the additional delays. Pascal Rialland, President of Covage, nevertheless risks predicting a postponement of deployment of "4 to 6 months in 2021" for the 75,000 fibre optic lines that Covage was to deploy in 2020 in Calvados.

Schedule slippages will be inevitable and consequently delays in commercialization could ultimately weigh on the economy of the projects carried by the communities. As will the more immediate additional costs associated with health precautions.

It is not possible at this stage to put a figure on these additional costs. InfraNum has also commissioned an impact study for the end of the month. The Federation of Industrialists intends to use this work as a basis for the recovery plan promised by the government for next September.

While waiting for a clearer picture of the impact of the health crisis, the participants in the Estates General of the RIPs preferred to insist on other levers for accelerating deployment in order to respond to the digital impatience.

On the industrial side, the immediate cash needs of companies in the sector were highlighted in order to be able to continue their activity. At the height of the crisis, infrastructure operators have multiplied initiatives to relieve the cash flow of their subcontractors (reductions in payment deadlines, advances and other subsidies). Now, the idea is to "put more agility" in the payments of France THD subsidies to local authorities, Julien Denormandie announces.

But the President of the French Telecoms Federation, Arthur Dreyfuss, tempers "the answer cannot only be public money". Beyond new financial help, the Secretary General of Altice France is waiting for "all those little everyday obstacles" to the deployment of fibre to be lifted. Many grievances have been voiced for years that many HSBB actors would like to see finally heard. In this exceptional situation, "we have to beat the iron", Patrick Chaize sums up. By making, for example, digital infrastructures an essential asset, argues the Senator of Ain and President of Avicca. An approach allowing the deployment to overcome some of these obstacles, also believes Arthur Dreyfuss, deploring that "we do not benefit from the right that gas or electricity enjoy.

An idea that does not convince Julien Denormandie, for whom such a status could be misunderstood by the French deprived of a good connection. The minister prefers to go through other texts for certain operational advances to which he says he is "open". On the other hand, concerning the very pressing question of co-ownership, the minister kicks the ball, referring to the "balances" of the Elan law. Operators and local authorities have therefore not finished with this painstaking work.

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Source : DegroupNews

Whether through the development of teleworking, videoconferencing or recreational uses, the French are making greater use of the various telecommunications networks, both fixed and mobile, during this period. But the situation seems to be under control in France.

In an interview by Les Dernières Nouvelles D'Alsace, Arthur Dreyfuss, President of the French Telecom Federation, explains: "We have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of connections from the very first hours and this is maintained throughout the confinement. [...] The need for telecoms networks is vital for work, entertainment and information."

And according to him, France is doing better than some of its neighbours. "But unlike other European countries, the networks in France hold, and help to ensure the country's continuity. [...] This is because operators have invested 20 billion in two years in infrastructure and they are collectively committed during this period."

He also points out that "despite the difficulties related to containment, technicians are working hard to meet the commitments, continuing deployments to bring new connections into service, in particular the antennas on the 140 mobile sites that are being pooled under construction. But we are facing many operational difficulties related to the crisis, which are obviously causing us to fall behind".

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Source : Univers Freebox

With the coronavirus crisis, the France Very High Speed Internet Plan, which aims to offer all French people a high-speed fixed Internet connection by 2022, is under threat. This huge project has indeed slowed down considerably with the containment measures.

The president of InfraNum, Étienne Dugas, warns: "If nothing is done, everything could stop within two weeks." At the end of the line, a lot of small and medium-sized companies could fall. Beyond the economic and social breakdown, he estimates that it will take months to restructure the sector and thus relaunch the machine once the epidemic is over.

To avoid such a scenario, Étienne Dugas believes it is essential to maintain fibre deployment activity at the current level. He therefore requested the support of the executive last April 1st during a meeting between representatives of the Telecoms sector and the ministers in charge of Territorial Cohesion and Relations with Local Authorities.

Both InfraNum and the French Telecommunications Federation (FFT) consider it essential that the government publish its Covid-19 guide for the construction industry as soon as possible in order to provide a framework enabling workers deploying fibre to work in safety. Especially since according to InfraNum and the FFT the FFP1 protective masks are sufficient.

Another concern of the industrialists is that many subcontractors can no longer work due to a lack of agreement from the communities. While others have difficulty accessing buildings to connect them to the fibre. Infranum is therefore asking the government to take steps to remove these obstacles.

Finally, an appeal has been launched to provide financial assistance to the fibre industry to keep the most fragile subcontractors afloat. According to Étienne Dugas, the major operators must also "make an effort to enable the sector to survive this tsunami."

Asked about this, the CEO of the FFT, Michel Combot, emphasizes that "the crisis has an impact on the turnover of operators." According to him, Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom are considering ways to support their own chains of subcontractors. "Discussions are underway. Operators could take different types of measures, such as efforts on payment deadlines. We are well aware of our global responsibility."

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Source : La Tribune

Due to the containment caused by the coronavirus outbreak, telecommunications operators are expecting an increase in the load on their infrastructure.

Invited by franceinfo on 17 March, the president of the French Telecommunications Federation, Arthur Dreyfuss, called for "digital responsibility" to avoid saturation. He warns that operators "may need to adapt" and "prioritize" certain uses to cope with these peaks in connections.

franceinfo: Will the infrastructure withstand the shock?

Arthur Dreyfuss: More than 15,000 technicians and engineers from all telecom operators are mobilised to ensure that the networks will hold up for the next few days, weeks, or even months. We are entering an era of social discipline and we must also enter a period of digital responsibility, both individual and collective. This is a completely new situation. The bulk of the population will be at home at the same time, all day long, for the coming weeks and months.

We are on the verge of a rise like we have never seen before. The operators are fully mobilized and we are working hard to make sure they can operate.

Does that mean rationing digital consumption?

No, but there are everyday gestures to be apprehended. At home, for example, it's better to use Wi-Fi to make calls, work, communicate and get information. This makes it possible to switch to fixed networks with greater capacity than mobile networks.

But we are going to combine telecommuting, distance learning for children, digital entertainment... Aren't the networks going to overheat?

We are used to absorbing consumption peaks, but we are going to live with a continuous increase in consumption. All individuals and companies must adapt and prioritize. It is a collective responsibility.

Could the operators come to curb the most consuming uses?

In this period, the priorities are the health of the population, working at home, the pursuit of economic life... We may indeed need to adapt to meet these priorities and we will work with all the players to adapt if necessary.

It's like the highway crossings at the end of July, beginning of August. You have to know how to adapt your consumption in the same way that you sometimes adapt your traffic.

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Source : franceinfo

The telecoms police officer has just sent an early formal notice to Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad-Free regarding the "New Mobile Deal". Indeed, Arcep considers that the commitments made by operators under this agreement, dating from January 2018, are not progressing fast enough.

At the time, the State agreed to renew part of the frequencies granted to operators for ten years and free of charge. A "gift" with a counterpart, however: the operators had undertaken to cover the territory more, particularly in the famous "white areas".

By the end of 2020, they must have converted all their existing 2G and 3G sites to 4G and improve mobile coverage on transport routes (from 2018) and inside buildings (from 2019).

But a year and a half after the signing, the regulator would find that progress was insufficient. "The regulator has no confidence in the operators, he believes that this case is dragging on," explains a source familiar with the case.

If the targets were not met by the 2020 deadline, early warning would make it possible to initiate sanctions more quickly without wasting time.

Aware that operators have always had difficulty meeting their commitments, the government has organised progress reports on the progress of the work. This was obviously not enough.

However, in June 2018, the government published the first 485 sites on which operators had to install their 4G antennas. For its part, the Arcep had launched its quarterly dashboard. But several observers had already warned of the magnitude of the task. "The deadlines were super-short. We could legitimately be concerned," recalls one participant today.

Operators, on the other hand, deny any delay. "Operators are deploying on schedule. ...] We are on the ground every day to solve administrative and technical challenges with the support of communities and government services. Arcep is welcome in the territories and will thus become even more aware of the collective success underway to finally solve the problem of white areas," said Arthur Dreyfuss, President of the French Telecommunications Federation. Summer is therefore likely to be turbulent.

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Source : Les Echos

France's leading Internet service providers ranked it as one of the largest consumers of bandwidth a year ago. These groups, such as Google, Netflix, Akamai, Facebook, take advantage of the tips of French operators without paying their fair share.

The French Telecoms Federation (FFT) and its president are therefore calling for "more equity". In an interview with Le Figaro, Arthur Dreyfuss explains that "80% of the taxes paid in France by digital players are paid by French telecom operators. At certain times of the day, 80% of telecom network traffic is due to YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook".

Under these conditions, the FFT proposes to introduce a toll, i.e. to charge for access to the networks of French operators. As these pipes are extremely profitable for American giants, access providers are wondering when they will participate in financing the infrastructure. Indeed, ISPs must constantly invest in expanding and improving their networks. These are therefore heavy financing for which the Internet giants participate little or not at all.

This proposal does not come about by chance since the government wants to introduce a tax on the advertising activities of the largest digital companies. It should be implemented very quickly since it has just been voted by the Senate.

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Source : Journal du Geek