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

It is now the turn of the professionals in charge of connection to commit themselves to solving the problem posed by the lack of maintenance or connection to the fibre. They have committed, through the signing of a charter of good practice, to put an end to what the public authorities see as a major obstacle to the adoption of fibre in the country.

A series of commitments including that of limiting themselves to a single level of subcontracting, "with particular attention to the status and qualifications" of the subcontractors employed.

This is a challenge given that "cascading" subcontracting is often blamed for defects in the quality of connections. The signatory companies of this charter, representing 70% of the sector's players, have also undertaken to encourage the use of local employment and to support the training of their employees through the implementation of actions dedicated to initial training or skills upgrading.

These include Axians, Circet, Constructel, Eiffage, ENGIE Solutions, Firalp, NGE Infranet, SADE Télécom, Groupe Scopelec, SNEF Télécom, Sogetrel, Solutions30 and SPIE CityNetworks.

Commercial operators and infrastructure operators such as Altitude Infra, Axione, Orange, TDF and XpFibre had already committed themselves at the beginning of March to a new subcontracting framework contract (also known as STOC mode, for "Sous-Traitance Opérateur Commercial") in order to put an end to these repeated abuses which are poisoning the lives of users.

Unfortunately, this problem is not new. Indeed, a working group set up by Arcep on the subject already reported in 2019 on "significant rates of malfunctions in the execution of final connection and cross-connection operations at the mutualisation point".

It cited three main difficulties to be resolved in order to put an end to the proliferation of "noodle dishes": repeated non-compliance with the rules on cross-connection at the point of mutualisation, defects in the routes taken by the optical fibre which can lead to traffic jams at the optical connection points, and various acts of vandalism at the points of mutualisation.

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Source : ZDnet

After long negotiations, the government and Orange have just agreed on an action plan to improve the quality of service of the copper network. Indeed, even if the deployment of optical fibre is progressing rapidly, the 22 million French people who still have an active line based on this network must not be overlooked.

The plan therefore provides for an additional 10 million euros to be committed to 17 priority territories, as well as 123 new posts in departments under pressure and a 30% increase in national crisis response staff.

The incumbent operator will have to provide a back-up solution within a maximum of 24 hours from the time the incident is reported, provided there is mobile coverage. If the mobile network is not sufficient, a satellite connection will be made available from the town halls.

Local consultation committees will be set up to improve consultation between Orange and elected representatives. A national consultation committee will also include representatives of the Commission Supérieure du Numérique et des Postes (CSNP), representatives of associations of local authorities and government departments.

It should be remembered that the total dismantling of the copper network will begin in 2023 and will extend until 2030, as fibre optic coverage of the territory progresses.

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Source : 01net

At a conference organised to present a dedicated barometer produced by Infranum, representatives of the fibre industry and the authorities had reason to be pleased. Indeed, the sector should once again reach a milestone in 2021 with the deployment of 6.2 million connections during the year.

The fibre players have even allowed themselves the luxury of exceeding the government's objectives with forecasts of 87% of homes connected to fibre in 2022 instead of the 80% initially desired by the public authorities.

If the year 2020 had already seen the sector break all records for connections, with 5.8 million sockets installed, the current year is looking even better. And it is on the public initiative networks (RIP) that the sector's professionals have chosen to focus in 2021. Of the 6.2 million outlets expected in 2021, 3.6 million will be located in RIP zones, compared with 1.8 million in AMII zones, 0.5 million in very dense zones and 0.4 million in AMEL zones.

A slowdown is planned for 2022 with the deployment of 5.8 million sockets, the majority of which will still be installed in RIP zones. The result is that while 40.6 million homes will have fibre optic access by 2025, there will still be 6.5 million outlets to be installed between now and 2025 in order to complete the networks.

And this is where the problem lies: "if there are "only" 6.5 million outlets left to be deployed by 2025, these will be the most difficult", emphasise the industry's representatives.

And to point out that 2.1 million premises, i.e. the last 5%, will necessarily have to be financed via substantial public aid... Worse still, 3% of this "remainder to be deployed" will not be able to be deployed, due to technical and financial constraints. "For these homes, it will be necessary to study other avenues, such as satellite internet," says Infranum, which sees the launch of new satellite offers as an increasingly credible alternative for achieving the objective of very high speed broadband for all.

In order to achieve 100% of homes with fibre over the next decade, the sector's professionals are calling for the implementation of a universal fibre service.

But there are also other pitfalls in the provision of high-speed broadband for all. Starting with the quality of connections, where the average failure rate of connections is currently between 20 and 25%. And although the representatives of the sector and the public authorities made commitments a few weeks ago to combat the spread of "noodle dishes" in civil engineering cabinets or within buildings, the result will not be immediate.

Among the burning issues for the sector is also that of employment. What is to be done with the professionals involved in the connection process once it is completed? This question will continue to be asked in the years to come, especially as the sector has recruited 9,700 new employees in 2020, instead of the 5,500 announced last year, and plans to recruit 5,500 in 2021, rather than 1,500.

"Three points must focus our efforts: the transition from copper to fibre, improving the quality of connections and anticipating the post-2021 period, particularly with regard to employment," conceded Cédric O...., the Secretary of State for the Digital Sector, on Tuesday, while welcoming the work carried out so far, noting that "the figures are very good, but we must continue this collective work, because there are still challenges to be met.

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Source : ZDnet

In an interview with La Gazette Val d'Oise, Rachid Adda, director of Val-d'Oise Numérique, the union in charge of deploying fibre in the department, believes that "some individuals should stop changing operators every six months, to benefit from the cheapest subscription". According to him, "this mania for changing subscriptions represents up to 40% in certain districts" and would contribute to the current situation. He stressed that "breakdowns on the network only represent 5%".

Rachid Adda denounced the precariousness of the workers at the end of the chain. "The operator pays a subcontractor for interventions. But the subcontractor himself calls in another technician whom he pays less, while pocketing the operator's commission. This low-cost technician intervenes for 30 to 50 euros. He therefore needs to carry out a maximum number of repairs. That's why I am indignant about the outsourcing of interventions", he explains.

The director of Val-d'Oise Numérique also deplores the problem of the skills of the people working in the field: "It only takes 10% of the technicians to be poorly trained for the operation to fail".

It also denounces bad practices in the field. While the network is oversized, with, for example, a box containing 12 connections for 10 homes and 10 metres of optical fibre inside to leave room for manoeuvre in the case of repairs, some subcontractors would go as close as possible, even if it meant saturating a box, or would not warn when they had exhausted the available room for manoeuvre. Rachid Adda also reports a greater incidence for ground floor subscribers in buildings and explains: "the technician prefers to connect the subscriber on the 3ᵉ to the one on the ground floor, so as not to have to go upstairs". Another case: connections during inclement weather. "Some people, very often in winter, do not try to open a new line from the cabinet. They simply connect the subscriber to another subscriber... who they then disconnect," he says.

The director of Val-d'Oise Numérique also mentions the case of cabinets that have to be refurbished because of the numerous interventions, or even changed because of acts of vandalism. "A cabinet repair costs 100,000 euros. We do two a year. Recently, we changed three in six months in the same municipality," he explains.

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Source : Univers Freebox