One of the main transatlantic cable projects concerning France has just "landed" on a beach at Porge, near Bordeaux. The project was initiated by Facebook and built by Alcatel Submarine Networks. Orange, partner for the French part, was responsible for the operation. This required horizontal drilling 20 metres below the beach and the dune, in order to limit the impact on the environment and in particular the forest.

Named "Amitié", this cable links Massachusetts in the United States to Porge in France and Bude in England. It is 6,800 km long and carries a total of 16 pairs of optical fibres. It is scheduled to come into service in early 2022.

The French incumbent will benefit from two fibre pairs on this cable and will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the "landing station". Orange will provide the terrestrial links from this station to Bordeaux, then Paris and Lyon, and finally the rest of Europe. It also states that the cable will enable new data centres to be set up in the Bordeaux area.

Another transatlantic cable, "Dunant", was recently commissioned in the Vendée by Google. With traffic between Europe and North America doubling on average every two years, investment in new infrastructure is needed to absorb the increase. Between them, "Dunant" and "Amitié" will have more capacity than any previous transatlantic cable.

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Source : L'Usine Digitale

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

On May 5th, a massive Internet outage occurred for companies and employees confined to the south of Paris following acts of sabotage on the Orange fibre network. This was a major blow at a time when more than 100,000 of the operator's customers are teleworking.

In addition to teleworkers, entire corporate networks are being badly affected. And this act of sabotage is likely to have a major impact on the services of other operators. A ZDNet reader and system and network administrator for a company operating two data centers in the Paris region, Justin reveals that the incident began yesterday at 9:30 am: "Despite the redundancy of our 10 BGP fibers, we were heavily impacted. At our level, we had 6 fibres out of 8 cut, with the operators Iliad, Zayo, Sypartech and partially Jaguar". At 10:00 am this morning, he reported that he still had "one fiber in default between his two datacenters".

10 cables were severed at the dismantling machine in the communes of Ivry-sur-Seine and Vitry-sur-Seine yesterday. Orange's internet and telephone network is therefore severely disrupted in the Val-de-Marne and part of the city of Paris.

After noting the damage, the operator dispatched technicians to the site to carry out the necessary repairs. Orange estimates that 34,000 Internet customers and 12,000 business customers are potentially affected by the outage. Orange Ile-de-France's communications department said: "The priority customers identified are being restored as a matter of priority, the technicians will be taking turns and work will continue throughout the night for a gradual recovery and an end to the recovery is planned for Thursday night for Ivry-sur-Seine and is currently being assessed for Vitry-sur-Seine".

The operator filed a complaint and the department's judicial police was seized.

According to franceinfo, a note from the territorial intelligence services mentions a clear upsurge in acts of "degradation" and "sabotage" throughout the territory. 27 incidents have been recorded since the end of March. While these facts are not claimed, the majority of territorial intelligence agents favour the ultra-left route.

At the beginning of April, two relay antennae were set fire to in a small commune in the Jura for an estimated loss of one million euros. A fibre-optic cable was cut in the Gard department, depriving more than 23,000 subscribers of telephone and Internet access for 12 hours. Damage to base stations was also reported in Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

According to this note from territorial intelligence, the authors would seek to destabilise economic activities and teleworking through such sabotage.

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Source : ZDNet

Google's future private transatlantic submarine cable called "Dunant", a 6,600-kilometre long cable linking the United States and France, is due to come into service by the end of 2020. Orange, a partner of the Californian giant, laid the final section in the Vendée on 13th March.

To link up with the existing terrestrial network, the cable ends in a "landing station" near a beach in the commune of Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez. This underground installation was set up in a bunker more than 10 metres underground, originally built for a NATO cable. The bunker had been dormant since 2016, when it hosted its last cable, "Eurafrica", linking France, Morocco and Portugal. Similar work will soon take place at the other end of the cable, i.e. at Virginia Beach in Virginia.

As the first cable between the United States and France in 15 years, Dunant should make it possible to cope with the sharp increase in traffic expected between Google's data centres on either side of the Atlantic.

The fiber pairs will have a capacity of 30 Tbps each, compared with 3.2 Tbps offered by the previous transatlantic cable, which has been operational since 2001. Orange will benefit from two fiber pairs.

In addition, at the end of 2019, Google inaugurated a first cable, called "Curie", between the United States and Chile. A third, "Equiano", is planned between Portugal and South Africa.

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Source : L'Usine Nouvelle

In 1990, no way to correctly receive television at Ferrette: the hertzian waves don't pass, they bounce. Three friends fond of technics set-up their cables: it was the birth of the local network, named Kbleu... and television reached Ferette!

Kbleu chooses to operate as a municipal or inter-municipal local authority structure.

In 2015, this authority manages the TV, Internet and telephony distribution infrastructures for the citizens of both municipalities. The friends are still there: energetic volunteers and experts, they practice sharing for the benefit of all. Proponents of open-source software and its spirit, they provide an alternative to the market-based model. And refuse to give-up and bend before the leading market operators...

Kbleu animates the local channel and distributes television, telephony and Internet, for all residents of Ferrette and Vieux Ferrette. Saying "Kbleu" means a cable (we are located in the south of Alsace...). It is a simple play on words of the malicious inventors.

Kbleu is present at EuroGIX, rack 1B02.

ASN : 50547

 What Kbleu appreciates:

• Simplicity: clear offer of services
• Quality: professional expert technicians
• Public service: no shareholders, the net income is used entirely for network improvement
• Reduced Costs: volunteers invest themselves for you!
• Integration of inhabitants: multicultural programs
• Investment in local life: KbleuTV, hosting of Internet sites for associations, partnerships with small and medium-sized enterprises, Internet filter for schools
• Reactivity: a whish? Kbleu is listening to you... and does its best!
• Challenges: Kbleu is successful in meeting all its goals!

  Kbleu today is:

• A unique TV subscription of more than 130 programs including a pack of pay-TV channels
• The 120 world's radio stations streamed over the network
• A standard Internet subscription (25 Mbits) and THD option (100 Mbits)
• A telephone subscription

More information on the Kbleu website...