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

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

For the first time in France, an associative Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be able to connect consumer subscribers in FttH. Indeed, thanks to a participative fundraising campaign, Illyse raised 5520 euros. This sum represents the entry ticket to the RIP (Réseau d'Initiative Publique) of the Loire department. The associative operator will now be able to set up a collection infrastructure. It will therefore be able to connect its first subscribers in early 2019.

But that's not all, since a second level of 4114 euros has been reached. This allows Illyse to become a LIR (Local Internet Registry) and thus receive an allocation of IP addresses from a regional Internet registry (RIR).

A big victory for ISP associations that are demanding cheap activated offers. Indeed, they cannot deploy their own fibre optic network due to lack of resources. Associative operators therefore turn to the network rental of a major player to offer FttH to their members. But in most cases, prices are unaffordable.

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Source : 01net.com

At the same time a telecom operator, Internet service provider and operator of hosted services, AVM Up chose the cloud to resolve the problems that affect professional telephony, e-mail, SMS, fax but also the processing of the multi-channel flow of incoming documents.

"Recognized and experienced Expert, our areas of activity group together 3 fields:

software,  telephony for business and network."

 AVM Up is at the same time the expertise, commitment and quality! AVM is a human-sized independent 100% French company.

"This proximity allows us to exchange our know-how (Commercial, Customer service, R&D, Operator service and Networks (NOC), Administrative, etc.) and to bring a true support to our customers, with a high quality level, a high availability and a closely monitored security."

Why LyonIX?

• The effort to improve the quality of Internet speed and the reduction in cost associated with the bandwidth.
• As Internet operator, it is also interesting to be able to reach the market place allowing to sell and to buy Internet transit and/or all types of IP services.
• LyonIX also allows to interconnect directly to our customers to be as close as possible to them and guarantee them a higher level of security by the implementation of an additional path towards the platform.
• LyonIX is also a perspective to reach other IXP: France-IX, Equinix … whose future potential customers can become members.
• Finally, LyonIX can also be interconnected with other country, the United Kingdom in particular.

AVM Up is present at the LyonIX 2D rack

ASN: AS201246

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Find more information here: AVM Up

Roberto di Lallo, Italian computer scientist at Roma Tre University, made a research on the importance of IXPs, Internet eXchange Points and their effects on the latency of networks. IXPs are infrastructures used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to exchange traffic between their Autonomous Systems (ASes). An IXP allows ISPs to interconnect their ASes directly, i.e. to establish peerings between them, rather than through third-party networks (upstreams). IXPs play a crucial role in the development of the Internet, encouraging ISPs to create a dense network of interconnections at low cost. Some of them have a throughput of many Tbit/sec and are some of the most important building blocks of today’s Internet.

Internet exchange points (IXPs) are infrastructures allowing the ISPs to exchange the traffic between their networks without passing by a third-party network. The historic and technical importance of the IXPs, in terms of network densification, performance and cost reduction, was recently questioned by certain number of major ISPs having decided to leave (de-peering) the IXPs under the pretext of better IP traffic management and improvement in the QoS.

A study conducted by Roberto di Lallo aims to prove that the benefits induced by the IXPs are real in terms of performance and network security. This consisted in using about 150 RIPE probes in Italy and comparing trafic performance passing through two main Italian IXPs, MIX and NaMex, or through third-party network besides IXPs, towards 50 sites considered to be critical (bank, insurance, administration), and the 100 most visited sites in Italy. It was made possible thanks to the collaboration of small local ISPs which left the control of their BGP announcements to Di Lallo's team.

Orignal article in English