"The objective will be met: to bring very high speed broadband to 100% of French people by the end of 2022, 80% of which will be fibre - probably more," said Cédric O, the Secretary of State for Digital Affairs.

After a decade of work and more than 20 billion euros invested, the figures prove him right. Indeed, two thirds of French households were eligible for fibre optics last spring. With a current rate of 15,000 new homes and businesses seeing fibre arrive on their doorstep every day, the 80% mark will be passed by the first half of 2022.

For French people not covered, there is an alternative solution offering speeds of over 100 Mb/s: VDSL, cable or, soon, satellite - thanks to the commissioning of Eutelsat's very powerful Konnect VHTS.

The gamble has therefore been successful nine years after the launch of the "France Very High Speed Plan". Especially since the objectives have been raised: the estimated total number of households in France has risen from 36 million in 2013 to 41 million in 2022, without lowering the 80% mark. And that there was no shortage of difficulties: shortage of raw materials, shortage of manpower, stoppage of construction sites at the start of the pandemic, etc.

The work still needs to be finished, because even in large cities, around 10% of homes are still without fibre optics. In medium-sized towns, the situation is not satisfactory either. They were supposed to be fully covered by fibre by the end of 2020. Six months after the deadline, only four out of five homes were eligible. The government and Arcep are passing the quid on a possible sanction, but a certain annoyance is perceptible on the part of the authorities. As for the countryside, fibre is being rolled out at breakneck speed. But they are not fully covered by the projects already launched. About 2 million homes are still in limbo. These lines, the most complicated to build and the least profitable, will require new subsidies.

Through the stimulus package, the government has already put €150 million on the table. The industry estimates that at least two to three times more will be needed. An evaluation mission should be made public at the end of the year. We will then know how much the next executive will have to invest if it wants to bring fibre to 100% of French people.

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Source : Les Echos

Although the launch of the France Très Haut Débit plan in 2013 was slow, its acceleration has finally produced good results. Metropolitan France will not be covered by 2022, as was initially planned, and it will take until 2025 - or even 2030 - for some regions to be fully covered. However, the investments made in deployment work have enabled the country to make a good comeback in the European rankings. France is now ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy with an average speed of over 50 Mb/s.

These efforts have resulted in a significant increase in subscriptions, as France now has more than 14 million fibre-optic customers. The country will soon have more fibre subscribers than xDSL Internet customers.

Orange is by far the leading fibre optic Internet provider with over 5.2 million customers, ahead of SFR (3.6 million), Free (3.3 million) and Bouygues Telecom (1.9 million).

Moreover, the health crisis has only accentuated the need for the French to be able to rely on a reliable and efficient Internet connection. So much so that in the real estate sector, the connection of properties to the fibre optic network is becoming an increasingly important criterion for buyers.

The current challenge is in rural areas, where fibre optics are more expensive to deploy and less profitable. This is why the State and local authorities are obliged to get involved through the RIPs (public initiative networks) to accompany the rollouts carried out by the operators. This is why the recovery plan decreed to revive the economy after the stoppage linked to Covid-19 provides for some 570 million euros for the deployment of optical fibre.

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Source : Les Numériques

The broadband and ultra-broadband market observatory for the first quarter has just been published by Arcep. The regulator notes that "the number of very high-speed subscriptions rose by 1.1 million, i.e. a growth rate of 170% compared to the first quarter of 2020".

This means that "the number of very high-speed subscriptions has reached 15.7 million, and now represents more than half (51%) of the total number of Internet subscriptions in France (+9 points in one year) and 53% of the number of premises eligible for very high-speed access, up 6 points in one year".

The figures for fibre rollouts are also upbeat: "Public Initiative Networks have achieved their best deployment quarter ever and are outpacing private operator rollouts in AMII zones. The overall pace of deployment remains high in the first quarter of 2021, with 1.5 million FTTH lines".

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Source : Next Inpact

The latest quarterly figures published by Arcep confirm the growth of optical fibre in France: "the fourth quarter of 2020 was marked by record growth in fibre optic deployment (FttH) and its adoption, which concludes another record year in 2020". The 10 million subscriptions to FttH offers have now passed the 10 million mark.

The number of very high-speed broadband subscriptions now stands at 14.7 million. This represents nearly half of the total number of Internet subscriptions in France, and 51% of the number of premises eligible for very high-speed broadband, an increase of 3 points in one year.

This growth is primarily due to the increase in FttH subscriptions. With 3.3 million additional accesses in 2020, the number of FttH subscriptions is estimated at 10.4 million, or 70% of the total number of very high-speed accesses. Although broadband subscriptions still make up the majority of Internet subscriptions, with almost 16 million, they have dropped by 2.5 million in 2020.

In total, at the end of 2020, France had 30.6 million broadband and very high-speed subscriptions. This represents an increase of 285,000 in one quarter and 800,000 in one year (+2.7%). "Such annual growth has not been observed for three years," according to estimates from Arcep.

A trend that owes much to the sustained deployment of end-to-end fiber optic lines by operators and players in the sector. More than 1.9 million additional premises were made connectable to FttH during the fourth quarter of 2020. "More than 5.8 million lines were deployed in 2020, despite the health situation, 19% more than in 2019," said the telecoms policeman.

Now, 24.2 million premises are eligible for FttH offers, an increase of 31% in one year. Most of this growth is located in medium-density areas - the AMII zone (Appel à Manifestation d'Intention d'Investissement). At the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 28.6 million premises were eligible for very high-speed broadband services, all technologies combined, including 21.7 million outside very dense areas.

While fiber deployment is progressing well, many homes and businesses are complaining about connectivity at half-mast. This is due to faulty maintenance or connections at sharing points, which generate numerous quality-of-service problems.
To remedy this, the operators have just concluded an agreement that could be a milestone in the sector. They are committed to improving the safety and quality of interventions with a new system of penalties.

The agreement, announced by Infranum, also provides for the collective assumption of the costs of restoring the network. This will slow down the explosion of "noodle dishes" overflowing the pooling points, which could eventually pose a major problem for the connectivity of individuals and professionals.

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Source : ZDNet

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

On October 8th, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered SFR to send a letter to certain subscribers informing them that they can unilaterally terminate their fixed Internet access contract. Capital tells us that if the operator resists, it will have to pay 500,000 euros for each day of delay.

This legal procedure was initiated in January 2018 by its competitor Free. Indeed, although a decree has regulated the use of the word fibre since 2016, SFR has continued to maintain a certain vagueness in its commercial offers.

It is also accused of using the term FttB (Fiber to the Building) since, in some cases, its fiber does not go all the way down to the bottom of the building but only into a street cabinet.

Today SFR claims to have 3.1 million end-to-end fibre optic customers (FttH) and 13.8 million lines eligible for Very High Speed broadband.

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Source : 01net

Internet access has become a critical issue for small businesses. From the fibre dedicated to simple ADSL/SDSL access, when it is not a simple consumer internet box, there is a direct correlation between the size of the company and the quality of internet access. VSEs and artisans often have a poor perception of the need to pay a pro subscription that is more expensive than their domestic access, until their offices are deprived of Internet access for several days while their operator troubleshoots them.

Different options are available to the entrepreneur. On the one hand, the pro offers of all the major national operators. These are catalogue products that are ultra-standardised and industrialised. In addition to an HT invoicing, these packages offer some interesting SLAs, in particular an intervention within 8 hours in case of breakdown, a customer support dedicated to professionals, sometimes a backup of the fixed link with a 4G router. The very competitive cost is mainly due to the fact that they are based on the telecom infrastructures of the consumer network, ADSL/SDSL or VDSL on the copper network or FTTH/EPON for the fibre.

But the other side of the coin is that these offers are not very flexible. The company has to comply with what the package offers. A company wishing to benefit from more personalised services must turn to company type operators capable of customised solutions.

On this market cohabit large international operators such as Verizon and Deutsche Telekom but also a multitude of regional or national operators such as Avenir Telecom, Bretagne Telecom, Coriolis, Foliateam, Hexatel, Kertel, Teleris or even OVH. The interest for an SME to turn to a purely B2B operator with a strong regional presence is to be able to benefit from integration services that go beyond the simple installation of the fibre.

These small players compete with the major operators and their integrators by offering companies local services and the ability to maintain a very close technical and commercial link with their customers.

Today, these "small" operators are seeking to break through their regional glass ceiling, either by making acquisitions or by turning to external sources of financing. If there is no clear consolidation of the market around the incumbent operators, the French players positioned on the fibre market are obtaining significant financing to develop, and the cards are being reshuffled, particularly on this fibre market.

The challenge for the market players is to recreate value and that is why we are seeing a lot of fund-raising and a change of shareholders. Fibre requires large investments, but it will be the key to offer new offers to companies and finally see very high speeds arrive in all companies, including the most modest.

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Source : ZDNet

The executive's discourse seems to have evolved over the summer on the issue of digital planning. The future recovery plan will not forget fiber since the plan will provide additional funds to support areas where some 3 million lines remain to be financed.

This financial boost is part of a more ambitious project, outlined by Cédric O: moving towards a "universal service" for fiber.

The first piece of information delivered by the Secretary of State for the Digital Transition and Electronic Communications: the subsidy window for public fiber deployment projects is going to be replenished.

Until now, the government has refused to go beyond 280 million euros in subsidies, when both local authorities and manufacturers calculated total needs at 680 million euros. 680 million. Last May, in a letter sent to the executive, local authority associations warned that "a reassessment of this envelope will have to be studied in light of the financial situation of local authorities, the higher deployment costs associated with health measures and the higher than expected number of catches to be deployed".

Unveiled next week, the recovery plan will provide more details on the effort the government is prepared to make on this specific point.

Additional funds to generalize fiber, yes, but "with the ambition to move towards the logic that fiber must be an essential service," added Cédric O. The government seems to be aligning itself with a request made by local authorities, since this would allow "professionals in the sector to continue to ensure the deployment and operation of fixed and mobile networks in the event of a crisis". It would also provide an opportunity to remove certain obstacles to deployment, such as access to common areas to fiber the risers of buildings.

If the idea of making fiber an essential infrastructure met with the reservations of the former Minister of the City and Housing - in charge of the THD dossier - this is however what the executive wants to work towards today: "we want to work on the notion of universal service," indeed added Cédric O. A project that could start as early as this fall, when the European Electronic Communications Code is transposed into French law. "This should enable us to extend the concept of universal service to include fiber coverage of the territory," the Secretary of State for Digital Affairs added.

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Source : DegroupNews

For 18 months now, the Association of Local Authorities for Digital Technology Avicca, the federation of industrialists InfraNum and the France THD Mission have been working on the overhaul of the Grace THD data exchange format. A revised and corrected "v3" that will become the future standard for public fibre optic networks.

The promises of Grace THD V3: "the harmonisation and standardisation of data exchange practices between private and public players" are one of the conditions for "industrialising deployments". In order to meet the objectives of the France THD Plan, the ambition is to return as soon as possible to 2019 production rates.

This common frame of reference also aims at enabling local authorities to constitute a reliable and exploitable base for their public initiative networks.

A recommendation of the France THD Plan, accompanied by an application guide, will help promote the adoption of this model. Thus, "the France THD Mission recommends to all local authorities to migrate to GraceTHD v3" in the operational phase. While in the deployment phase, "the migration will be decided by the local authority under the aegis of the MTHD, after consultation with the local and national private stakeholders concerned".

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Source : DegroupNews

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

The Internet is made up of access links that route traffic to high-bandwidth routers and accompany the traffic from its source to its destination using the best available path.

In order to ensure that Internet traffic can be routed anywhere in the world, these individual high-speed fibre optic networks must be interconnected. This interconnection is therefore called backbone or Internet backbone interconnection. Each network is owned by Internet operators, usually private, Tier 1 operators whose networks are interconnected.

These Tier 1 Internet operators create a single global network by bundling their long-distance networks, allowing each of them to access the entire Internet routing table. This allows them to efficiently route traffic to its destination through a succession of local, tier 2 and tier 3 providers. These backbone operators all use the same shared network protocol: TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)/IP (Internet Protocol).

The networks of these Tier 1 operators are connected at the IXP (Internet Exchange Point) level. These exchange nodes, being equipped with high-speed switches and routers, allow traffic to be routed between peers (participants connected to the exchange node using the BGP protocol to make traffic). These interconnection points are often owned by third parties, sometimes on a non-profit basis, thus facilitating the unification of the backbone.

Tier 1 operators participating in the IXP contribute to their financing, but do not charge each other for carrying the traffic of other Tier 1 operators. This type of relationship is known as "peering" or "peering without agreement". Peering avoids possible financial disputes that could impact Internet performance.

There are smaller Tier 2 (Tier 2) and Tier 3 (Tier 3) operators. Tier 3 operators allow businesses and consumers to access the Internet. As these Tier 3 operators do not have their own access to the Internet backbone, they contract with Tier 2 or regional ISPs that have their own networks to carry traffic to a limited geographical area.

As access does not concern all devices connected to the Internet, the second-tier providers in turn contract with the first-tier providers to have access to the global backbone.

In summary, traffic originating from a computer on one side of the globe can connect to a connected computer on the other side of the globe by sending the traffic to a Tier 3 operator. This operator routes the traffic to a Tier 2 operator who redirects it to a Tier 1 backbone operator. The latter then redirects it to the appropriate Tier 2 operator. The operator itself sends this traffic to a Tier 3 operator who delivers the traffic to the destination computer.

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Source : Le Monde Informatique

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

A new contract between the Region, the 4 Auvergne departments and Orange, signed 10 months ago, provides for broadband coverage of the entire Auvergne region by the end of 2020. Everything suggests that this objective will be achieved, as will the goal of making 91% of the Auvergne population eligible for fibre by the end of 2022.

In order to finance the equipment of rural areas, the Auvergne Region and the 4 departments had created a Public Initiative Network (RIP). Last year, Laurent Wauquiez renegotiated phase 3 of the RIP, getting the national operator to do "better (800 communes instead of 400), faster (2022 instead of 2025) and for less (137 million saved)".

A monitoring committee was then set up to ensure that Orange respects its commitment. It met for the second time on 7 February. Jérôme Barré, Head of Wholesale Markets at Orange, declared bluntly: "In 2019, we have hit the grand slam".

In figures: 50% more sockets connected in 2019 than in 2018, 166,000 customers already connectable, 48,000 customers connected, i.e. a penetration rate of 28%.

Since July 2019, connected households have been able to choose another operator, Free. Jérôme Barré also announced that the entire offer (with SFR and Bouygues) will be available in 2021. And this will be a first for an RIP.

On the business side, Orange is committed to "putting fibre everywhere". An offer at 250 € is proposed to them, whereas the previous tariffs were prohibitive, Laurent Wauquiez recalled.

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Source : La Montagne