The wholesale operator, which took control of Kosc in the summer of 2020, is now preparing to relaunch it. And Kosc's rebound is bound to be closely scrutinised by the various players in the sector.

David El Fassy, the CEO of Altitude Infrastructure - now renamed Altitude Infra, explains, "For us, the acquisition of Kosc is an unprecedented opportunity to expand our client base in areas other than those where we have traditionally operated, particularly in AMII or urban areas. [...] After beating Kosc's order record in September, we now wish to enrich its catalogue of addressable FttE and FttO products, on which Kosc has not had a strong presence until now". Other objectives include the development of Kosc's coverage in SFR's AMII zones, with the eventual ambition to push for full unbundling of the wholesale operator.

Altitude Infra wants to make Kosc's API the most complete aggregator of telecommunications infrastructures, both for its major accounts (such as OVH) and also for VSEs. Indeed, the latter constitute the most important economic development basin of the corporate telecoms market.

To achieve this, the wholesale operator is planning a massive investment of 100 million euros over five years in Kosc. Xavier Grossetete, who has been working for Jaguar Network since 2017, has been appointed sales director and will be responsible for boosting the recruitment of new customers.

"With Kosc, we are becoming the operators' one-stop shop, with coverage throughout the country," says David El Fassy, confirming his intention "to invest and have a long-term influence on the fibre optics market, but also to develop new offers and services for companies". The plan proposed by Altitude Infra should enable Kosc to return to a positive Ebitda, as well as a turnover of between 80 and 100 million euros in 2022.

 Read the article

Source : ZDNet

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.

 Read the article

Source : ZDNet