A breakdown occurred on 11 September and continued until the next day in the departments of Tarn and Aveyron. The authorities said: "Following deliberate damage to two relay antennas, 52,000 Bouygues and SFR subscribers were affected by a loss of network".

The exact details of this failure were not communicated, but the authorities nevertheless made it clear that it was in no way accidental. Indeed, a relay antenna and a TDF pylon were set on fire in Albi.

These actions were also denounced by the Secretary of State for the Digital Economy, Cédric O, on Twitter: "I strongly condemn the arson of a TDF tower which affected the network of SFR and Bouygues Telecom subscribers, and the communications of 50,000 people in the Tarn and Aveyron."

This event takes place in a very particular context. For more than a year now, we have been witnessing arson attacks on 5G antennas throughout France and Europe. While the police are investigating, some do not hesitate to claim responsibility for their acts, as was the case with the anarchist movement, according to Ouest-France.

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Source : Presse citron

Bouygues Telecom Entreprises OnCloud is a new independent structure that benefits from its own infrastructure and Nerim's decade of experience, specialising in hosting and cloud computing.

"For the past two years, dozens of employees have been designing new infrastructures and offers based on our customers' real needs. What Bouygues Telecom Entreprises OnCloud offers today is unique on the market, both in terms of the quality of the advice it provides and its technical and commercial agility," explains François Treuil, Director of Bouygues Telecom Entreprises.

Bouygues Telecom Entreprises OnCloud is an operator, integrator and host all rolled into one and aims to establish itself as a pure player in the cloud. Its ambition is to be rapidly recognised as a trusted cloud, according to the new name given by the French government as part of the National Cloud Strategy. However, this recognition requires SecNumCloud certification issued by the ANSSI. This is a complex, restrictive and costly process that will take several months, if not years.

A new player that wants to reach out to a wide range of customers, including SMEs and SMIs, public authorities and large groups. The operator wants to offer public IaaS cloud services as well as help companies build their own private clouds.

However, the field is already crowded with American hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, IBM Cloud, etc.), small local hosting companies and OVHcloud and 3DS Outscale, which are already SecNumCloud certified. Not forgetting Scaleway and the still nascent Bleu (the result of a joint venture between Capgemini and Orange). And not to mention the Gaia-X initiative, which should also enable other European operators to establish themselves more strongly in France. The competition is going to be tough...

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Source : Informatique News

This financing agreement is the first of its kind between the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the French operator. The aim is to support the deployment of Bouygues Telecom's 5G network, "including in rural areas", and to increase its mobile radio network capacity "fourfold" by 2026, the EIB said in a statement.

Bouygues Telecom plans to invest €1.5 billion in the rollout of its 4G and 5G networks and in the fibre market, where the operator plans to win over 3 million additional customers. The group hopes to increase its subscription revenues by at least 40% over the next five years while increasing its profitability.

"Bouygues Telecom has great ambitions for mobile and 5G in the years to come and wants to help open up regions by reducing the digital divide. The European Union Bank's support for this vast industrial project is a validation of our choices and confirms the relevance of our strategy," said the operator's deputy CEO Christian Lecoq, quoted in the press release.

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Source : Le Figaro

With more than 33,000 consumer alerts via the "J alerte l'Arcep" platform in 2020, the telecoms regulator reveals a 37.5% increase in complaints compared to 2019.

Among the 4 operators (Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free), the worst performer was Free, generating the most negative requests from the French. It thus takes the place of SFR. In detail, Bouygues Telecom had 19 alerts per 100,000 customers. This compares to 25 for Orange, 26 for SFR and 29 for Free.

The French have used the Internet much more in 2020, with the various confinements, and have noticed many problems. "This year again, the most frequent complaints received concern the quality of service, including after-sales service. Next comes dissatisfaction with network developments (fibre rollout, insufficient mobile coverage, etc.), in particular fibre rollout, followed by operators' commercial practices and difficulties encountered when changing operators", explains Arcep.

Generally speaking, French people's satisfaction has fallen. If the average for operators was 7.65/10 in 2019, it was 7.5/10 in 2020.

The biggest differences are in fixed-line services. SFR customers give SFR a satisfaction rating of 6.8/10 compared to 7.5/10 for Orange.

For mobile, the scores range from 7.4 for SFR to 7.8 for Orange and Free.

While the operators' customer services are generally poorly rated. Free does well with a 2.6/5, while SFR closes the bench with a pitiful 1.8/5.

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Source : Journal du Geek

Arcep published its observatory of commercial 5G deployments on April 14th. As of March 31th, operators have commercially opened 12,917 5G sites, including 2,838 in the 3.5 GHz band. While analysis of the operators' curves shows that no one is neglecting the fifth-generation technology, not all are moving at the same pace.

With nearly 13,000 sites open in 5G in France at the end of March, mobile network deployment is steady. In just a few months, operators have secured coverage for millions of potential subscribers, and Arcep is even talking about "steady progress for the first few months of 2021."

Orange has activated the most sites and antennas in the 5G "core band" with 1,105 sites in 3.5 GHz. The incumbent operator is also supporting this deployment with 2.1 GHz technology (medium frequencies), enabling speeds equivalent to 4G since it exploits a band already in operation. By 2023, this middle band will provide access to new 5G services in current 4G areas.

Free Mobile continues to do well. Although the operator founded by Xavier Niel has activated fewer 3.5 GHz sites than Orange (824 vs. 1,105), it is the operator that has opened the most sites in France: 8,074 in total, i.e. 1,030 additional sites in one month, compared with 338 for Orange.

Unlike its three competitors, Free is still betting heavily on low frequencies (700 MHz). More than 7,000 sites have been opened in this band, which has lower bandwidths but has the advantage of penetrating buildings better.

As for the other two operators. Bouygues Telecom is still ahead of SFR, and even Orange in the total number of sites, from a statistical point of view. The operator - a subsidiary of the French construction giant - has activated a total of 2,263 sites, including 491 in 3.5 GHz and 2,091 in 2.1 GHz.

In terms of the number of 5G sites opened in 3.5 GHz, SFR is on a par with Bouygues Telecom with a total of 418. But the operator with the red square is clearly behind for the additional sites. Indeed, it has commercially opened 778 sites in 2.1 GHz. That is a total of 1 196 activated 5G sites all frequencies combined. This places SFR quite far from its first competitor.

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Source : Clubic

In a press release, af2m (French Association for the Development of Multi-operator Multimedia Services and Uses) "welcomes Iliad's membership, which joins Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR among its operator members".

The association has been working to "develop and promote multi-operator B2B2C services while respecting and protecting the end user" for more than 15 years. Among the subjects of concern: segmented advertising, payment solutions on operator invoices, SMS marketing, etc.

For af2m "This membership is an opportunity for all digital players who will be able to offer their professional customers (companies, online service providers, local authorities, associations, etc.) services that are now accessible to all French mobile and Internet users".

This will certainly prepare the launch of the operator's B2B offer: Free Pro. A launch that has been imminent for months... but is finally becoming clearer. As a reminder, Free's parent company is still not a member of the French Telecom Federation.

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Source : Next Inpact

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 government has just announced a "digital and environmental roadmap" to reduce the carbon footprint of digital technology in France. With several measures, this document is the result of collaboration between the offices of Cédric O, Secretary of State for Digital Technology, and Barbara Pompili, Minister for the Ecological Transition. An aid fund with a budget of 300 million euros is also planned.

Among these measures, telecoms operators will have to encourage customers to bring back their unused mobiles. The goal is to inject them into the reconditioning circuit or direct them to the recycling circuit.

If turning to easily repairable devices (thanks to the repairability index in place since January 1, 2021) or reconditioned devices (from players such as Back Mark, ReCommerce or PRS Solution) is better but not ideal either. Cédric O indicates: "We have entrusted Arcep with a mission to look into the model of smartphones subsidized by telecom operators. This may be a gas pedal for the renewal of telephones and therefore problematic for the environment. We want to delve deeper into this subject and objectify the impact of these commercial practices before taking any decisions on the subject".

The French Secretary of State for Digital Technology is notably thinking about pushing "the leasing of smartphones from operators, as is done in other countries".

For his part, the telecoms gendarme has been asked to create an "environmental barometer of digital players". This will be based on data collected from players such as data center managers, smartphone manufacturers and telecom operators.

The Arcep will also have to take into account the environmental aspect when allocating 5G frequencies. As a result, the allocation criteria could include the energy consumption of the relay antennas, as well as the coverage of the territory.

Not forgetting the giants of the Net, especially popular video platforms such as Neflix. Barbara Pompili explains: "What is the point of broadcasting very high quality video on smartphone screens just a few centimeters wide? We need to avoid aberrant practices such as automatic video playback, for example, which lead to unnecessary energy consumption".

The government will also have to set an example by turning to refurbishment and supporting the industry. "The government must set an example. We would like to see 20% of public orders for telephones or computer equipment to be for reconditioned devices," says Barbara Pompili.

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Source : Univers Freebox

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 annual report on the quality of experience of the services offered by mobile operators in mainland France has just been published by the specialized firm Qosi. This document is intended to report on user experience on 2G, 3G and 4G networks marketed by operators during the year 2020.

This study is based on feedback from 42,000 contributors spread across 20,000 municipalities in France. And the results reflect a growing disparity of situations, whether in the countryside or in the city. By 2020, 23% of metropolitan municipalities will have a low-quality 4G network, with the vast majority of flows below 10 Mb/s. Worse still, 3% of the municipalities surveyed do not have any usable data network... 95% of these municipalities are located in rural areas.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the quality of service of mobile networks is constantly improving, both in the city and in the countryside. In terms of downstream speeds, for example, Orange is one step ahead of its competitors in 2020, with the best average speed at national level. The incumbent operator is followed by SFR, then Bouygues and finally Free.
Despite widespread improvement, this is still not enough to widen the yawning gap that now separates rural and urban connections.

Take the case of Orange. Even by improving its downstream speeds by 10 Mb/s in all geographical areas, this is still not enough to close the gap between the quality of service observed in rural and urban areas. The operator is thus the one with the greatest disparity in speeds between the different strata of the population.

Conversely, Free is progressing uniformly throughout the country, making it the operator offering the most consistent quality of service.

The same applies to upload speeds. Orange has the best average upload speed in France. But the difference in treatment will remain significant depending on whether users are in urban or rural areas. In spite of this, the incumbent operator has established itself as the operator offering the best speeds for all population strata. Next comes Bouygues Telecom, followed by SFR and then Free.

This territorial divide is logically reflected in the results of the quality of service offered by operators on web browsing. At the national level, the proportion of pages displayed in less than 10 seconds is 92% for Orange, 89% for Bouygues Telecom and SFR and 86% for Free. Here again, rural areas are down 5 to 10 points compared to urban areas. This is enough to push operators to redouble their efforts to finally hope to bridge the digital divide in 2021.

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Source : ZDNet

Spanish company Cellnex has just acquired the entire portfolio of 10,500 French mobile sites from Hivory, SFR's TowerCo. Effective by the second half of 2021 and subject to approval by the authorities, the transaction was valued at 5.2 billion euros for Cellnex. It will also include an additional investment program of 900 million euros to deploy 2,500 new sites by 2029.

With this transaction, Cellnex is at the forefront of the mobile infrastructure market in France. Present in France since 2016 through its local branch, the group had more than 9,000 mobile sites throughout the country by 2020. The acquisition of Hivory puts Cellnex in the shoes of the sector leader, with nearly 20,000 mobile sites (antennas and rooftop terraces) across the country.

As under the agreements entered into by Bouygues Telecom and then Free with Cellnex, SFR is expected to remain the tenant of its former mobile infrastructure network for a period of at least 18 years, renewable for periods of 5 years.

The agreement signed with SFR illustrates the Group's strong ambitions in France and Europe. The Spanish mobile infrastructure champion has therefore just acquired one of its main competitors on the French market.

Now only TDF and the future TowerCo of Orange France remain on the French market to face the Spanish giant. This puts the latter in a comfortable position, before its new capital increase. This should enable it to finance a portfolio of acquisition projects, part of which has already been committed for the acquisition of Hivory in France and the integration of Deutsche Telekom's sites in the Netherlands.

For fiscal year 2019, the Group recorded a 15% increase in total revenues for the year and a 16% increase in EBITDA compared to the previous fiscal year. With operations in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Denmark and Sweden, the Spanish ogre now has a fleet of 120,000 sites, 75,000 of which are operational, with the remainder being acquired or deployed by 2028.

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Source : ZDNet

In July 2020, Free approached the Arcep, asking it to specify the conditions of access for market players to SFR's FttH network in less dense private initiative zones (AMII). Iliad's subsidiary demanded that SFR's tariffs for access to the terminal part of its network be regulated, limiting any increase to the indexation provided for in the mutualization contract between the two operators and making any change beyond this scale subject to the signature of a rider "negotiated in good faith".

This is a hot topic, because already last April, the Arcep said it was ready to put the "points on the i's" in the issue of the increase in connection rates to SFR's fiber network in private areas. In fact, the Authority had already demanded from the mark with the red square the cancellation of the increase in its tariffs in force since the beginning of the year 2020 after having been seized by Bouygues Telecom last winter.

Free, which therefore demanded the revision of the co-financing rates demanded by SFR, in the AMII zone, so that they do not exceed €5.12 per line and per month (or €513.6 per line for the non-recurring rate) for a co-financing up to 20%.

This request was accepted by Arcep, which asked SFR to adjust its tariffs in the AMII zones but also in the AMEL zones. The Gendarme des Télécoms justifies this position by stating that SFR's infrastructure branch "has not produced any specific elements that would allow it to understand its costs" and believes that increases in access tariffs must "be justified by cost elements".

As in the dispute between Bouygues Telecom and SFR, the Arcep has enjoined the brand with the red square to return to its co-financing rates applied before February 2020. However, it has the possibility of adjusting them in a much more modest manner by means of an amendment. This decision was eagerly awaited by certain players in the sector, for whom the survival of the principle of sharing the terminal part of the Orange and SFR fiber networks, in force since 2008, was at stake.

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Source : ZDNet

Free was lagging behind when it came to activating IPv6 support on the mobile, but that has now changed. Indeed, a new option has appeared in the Free Mobile subscriber area allowing to activate it.

The transition to IPv6 has been a long-standing issue for operators since the shortage of IPv4 addresses has been felt for several years. The use of the new IP address standard solves the problem; the new protocol has an almost unlimited stock of IP addresses attributable to devices.

At the beginning of December, the Arcep updated its barometer of the IPv6 transition in France. Bouygues is doing well in this respect, with 87% of Android customers and 98% of iOS customers IPv6-enabled. Second came Orange with 35% on Android and 60% on iOS, while on SFR, only 0.2% of Android customers had activated IPv6. Free was last, as IPv6 activation was simply not available for the ISP's mobile clients until then.

While Free has been a poor performer on cell phones, the operator is catching up on fixed Internet networks with 99% of its customers having an IPv6-enabled connection. Next comes Orange with 75%, followed by Bouygues at 28% and SFR at 1.6%.

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Source : ZDNet

Despite the shortage of IPv4 addresses, the Arcep draws a mixed picture of the transition to the IPv6 network protocol. In its annual barometer, the gendarme des Télécom notes the progress made by operators in the fixed-line sector, in particular Free, and to a lesser extent Orange. While both have high rates of IPv6-activated customers, SFR appears to be lagging behind, while Bouygues Telecom must accelerate its efforts.

In the mobile sector, Bouygues Telecom has made the most effort, followed by Orange. As for SFR, they are working twice as hard to catch up, while Free Mobile has still not begun the transition.

However, it is the rate of mail hosting that alarms the Arcep the most. Indeed, only Google stands out with more than 95% of domain names in IPv6 for mail servers.

Today, France would rank tenth in the world Top 30 in terms of IPv6 usage rate. It would rank fifth, behind Belgium, Germany, Greece and Switzerland at the European level.

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Source : 01Net

Based on an October U.S. report referring to the 3.7-3.9 GHz band used by 5G, the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC) is concerned that the first 5G antennas could disrupt guidance systems inside aircraft. Indeed, this would create a "major risk" for aircraft radio altimeters that also rely on these frequencies. This system is the only device on board aircraft to be able to measure their distance from the ground or other obstacles. Philippe Barnola, Deputy Director at the DGAC, specifies that "Complementary technical analyses are underway to ensure the compatibility of these 5G stations with the needs of civil aviation".

And this is particularly disturbing for operators, who explain that they were informed of the problem once the frequencies were paid for. Now they fear delays in the deployment of 5G.

While operators will initially focus on city centers, they fear that they will not be able to cover more or less wide areas around airports in the future. And this could concern cities in some cases, such as those around Roissy or Orly airports.

The operators have therefore decided to write to the Secretary of State for Digital and Electronic Communications. For its part, SFR is threatening not to pay the first installment it owes the State for frequencies. While Bouygues Telecom wants to be compensated "in proportion to these new constraints".

In the office of the Secretary of State, they want to reassure themselves: "In Germany everything is going well, there is no reason why it should be any different in France". The protection zones around airports will be adapted for 5G, for example. Work has also been launched at the European level.

The same applies to the National Frequency Agency (ANFR). "In the end, there will be a delay of a few weeks or even months on a limited number of antennas near airports [...] There will be no sustainable exclusion zones. French airports have 2G, 3G and 4G. They will also have 5G."

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Source : Kulture Geek