After being condemned for its commercial practices concerning its 4G and 5G mobile packages three weeks ago, Orange has been rapped on the knuckles again. This time it is its practices in terms of the application - and especially the presentation - of the two-year legal guarantee of conformity that has led the Direction Départementale de la Protection des Populations (DDPP) of Val-de-Marne to crack down.

The French administration reproached the historical operator for presenting this two-year legal guarantee, which was made compulsory in 2016, as an offer specific to the operator, and not as a legally imposed guarantee. Orange has therefore been required to display a message to remind the public authorities that this guarantee is above all the result of their work.

The operator is also called upon to put its commercial offers in order, in particular by adding this famous missing term "legal guarantee", which does not appear on its labels and displays in its physical shops. The administration also points out that the omission of this legal notice may lead Orange subscribers not to enforce their rights.

Far from being a first for the incumbent, the latter has recently been condemned for similar omissions. On 27 July, it was convicted of "knowingly failing" to present in "satisfactory conditions the restrictions on use" of 4G and 5G services. A fine of €15,000 was imposed by the Paris judicial court for having forgotten to present the actual availability of the 5G network on French territory, as well as the minimum speeds actually available for the new generation of mobile technology to its customers.

This sentence followed a writ of summons from the association Consommation Logement Cadre de vie (CLCV), for whom the omission of these details amounted to knowingly misleading consumers potentially interested in trying out the new generation of mobile technology and taking advantage of the explosion in speeds so much vaunted by the promoters of 5G.

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Source : ZDNet

The founder and majority shareholder of Iliad, Xavier Niel, has decided to strengthen his control over the telecom group by launching a share buyback operation. The aim is to take the share off the stock market.

This simplified takeover bid, aimed at holding all the shares not held, is set at 182 euros per share, i.e. approximately 60% above the last price. This announcement caused Iliad's share price to rise by 61% on the Paris stock exchange in the early morning hours of Friday 30 July.

The operation was initiated by HoldCo II, a company controlled by Xavier Niel. He holds, directly and indirectly, 70.6% of the company's capital and 78.7% of its voting rights.

Xavier Niel and Iliad's senior executives and historical shareholders, who have undertaken to tender their shares to the offer, hold directly and indirectly 74.9% of the capital and 83.6% of the voting rights of the group. "At the end of the offer, if the number of shares not tendered to the offer does not represent more than 10% of Iliad's capital and voting rights, HoldCo II will ask the Autorité des marchés financiers to implement a squeeze-out procedure," the company said in a statement.

Founded in 1999, Free's parent company has operations in France, Italy and Poland. Europe's sixth-largest mobile operator by subscribers, Iliad has 42.7 million subscribers and generated revenues of €5.9 billion in 2020.

"Iliad's new phase of development requires rapid transformation and significant investment, which will be easier to achieve as an unlisted company. Our ambition for Iliad is to accelerate its development to make it a leader in telecommunications in Europe," Xavier Niel said in a statement.

This is not an isolated operation in the telecom sector. Indeed, last January, Patrick Drahi, founder and majority shareholder of the Altice group, also delisted his European group (SFR, RMC, BFMTV...). The operation was intended to make it easier for Altice Europe to implement its strategy and to focus on long-term objectives, without having its quarterly performance scrutinised by the markets.

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Source : Challenges

In order to accelerate the development of 5G, and in particular in the industrial world, the State is targeting €1.7 billion in public and private investment until 2025. The executive "will mobilise €480 million in public funding to support priority projects between now and 2022, and is aiming for up to €735 million in public funding between now and 2025 in order to mobilise, through a leverage effect, up to €1.7 billion in investments between now and 2025", said Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Industry, at a press conference on 6 July.

The problem for the government today is not to deploy 5G infrastructure but to accelerate the development of 5G use cases. In September 2020, the State has already selected 18 projects that will receive 83 million euros of public money, for a total investment of 260 million euros.

Three other projects have been announced and will receive €10 million of public money: a machine-to-machine communication (mMTC) project led by the engineering and consulting company Médiane Système, a network acceleration card from the Grenoble SME Kalray, and a building ventilation and heating control solution from another Grenoble SME, Adeunis.

The public funds will come from France Relance, the plan to support the economy after the Covid-19 crisis, and the 4th programme for future investments. The government estimates that this effort to stimulate 5G applications could create 20,000 new jobs by 2025, and bring the 5G market in France to 15 billion euros by that date.

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Source : FrenchWeb.fr

"As you all know, 2020 will have been a pivotal year as we have validated the merger of Rezopole with France-IX, and we are now France-IX Lyon.

This choice has been carefully considered throughout the year 2020, with you, our members, the Rezopole team and the Board of Directors.

This choice will allow us to pursue and develop our know-how around the Internet network, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and throughout France.

I would like to thank in this last "Annual Review" all those who believed in the Rezopole project and supported us despite the difficulties:

• Thanks to the founders of Rezopole, all pioneers and passionate about the Internet!
• Thanks to the members of the office (volunteers) who spent many evenings all these years to help us grow,
• Thank you to the team in Lyon, who kept Rezopole running 24/7,
• Thanks to the public authorities for their indispensable financial support,
• And thank you to all of you, our members, for whom we have created Rezopole in order to develop the industry.

See you at a future event."

Philippe Duby,

Former President of Rezopole

Vice President of France-IX

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Telehouse, a specialist in high connectivity hosting solutions in Europe, has signed a partnership with the operator Jaguar Network, a B2B subsidiary of the iliad Group, for the development of hosting activities in France in the latter's datacenter in Marseille.

Named "TH1 Marseille", this infrastructure will provide new neutral connectivity solutions to digital players, with the same know-how, the same proximity in support and the same excellence in service that have characterised Telehouse's activity for 30 years.

This agreement echoes the growth of Jaguar Network, of which Telehouse has been one of the historical partners by hosting it in its TH2 Paris datacenter. In return, Jaguar Network is now offering Telehouse a new opportunity to develop its offer on its historic campus in Marseille.

Their common ambition is to contribute to making the city one of the top 5 most connected cities in the world, and to reinforce the Paris / Marseille digital highway, in order to place France at the centre of international data exchanges. Marseille's dynamism is based on its submarine cable network linking Asia/Pacific to Europe with a Marseille/Frankfurt/Amsterdam axis.

In 2023, capacity will increase from 150 terabits to 720 terabits thanks to the 8,000 km Google Blue Raman cable (India, Saudi Arabia and Marseille, avoiding Egypt).

Thanks to Telehouse's historical know-how and Jaguar Network's local presence, customers will be able to benefit from all existing or future fibres.

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Source : Datacenter Magazine

From January 2022, UK operator EE will reintroduce roaming charges in Europe. It is the first UK mobile operator to take this step, having previously said it would not reintroduce roaming charges.

It intends to charge its new UK customers extra to use their mobile phones in Europe. All new registrants, as well as users wishing to upgrade their plans from 7 July 2021, will have to pay £2 a day to use their plan in 47 European destinations.

The European Commission, meanwhile, proposed a few months ago to extend the abolition of roaming charges between different EU countries by 10 years. This measure, which has been in force since June 2017, was initially due to end in 2022. It concerns the 27 EU Member States, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, but not the UK. Indeed, due to Brexit, it ceased to apply EU rules on 1 January.

According to a Eurobarometer survey, half of Europeans with a mobile phone have travelled to another EU country in the last two years. In the summer of 2019, data roaming usage increased 17-fold compared to the summer of 2016, the summer before roaming charges were abolished.

Back in January, EE, O2, Three and Vodafone said they had no plans to reintroduce roaming charges, even if the Brexit gave them the opportunity to do so. EE now justifies that reintroducing these charges will "support investment in our UK-based customer service, and in our leading UK network". The additional charges will not apply to UK users in the Republic of Ireland.

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Source : ZDNet

According to French, German and Norwegian researchers, the GEA-1 and GEA-2 encryption algorithms used in mobile data networks in the 1990s and 2000s have been weakened, one of them from the outset. Based on 2G technology, they were intended to secure the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) standard. Today, this network continues to be used for M2M systems or as a backup for data, SMS and mobile calls. Most of today's terminals are GPRS-enabled.

The aim of these two algorithms is to secure the transfer of data between phones and base stations in order to avoid the interception of communications. However, the experts found, for example, that GEA-1 did not encrypt in 64 bits as expected but only in 40 bits. With a lower security level, a computer network can more easily discover the key by brute force and read the streams.

To support this theory, specialists reverse engineered GEA-1 and GEA-2. By recreating the former, they found that their algorithm was more secure than the original version. Disregarding the notion of chance, they believe that this weakening of security was intended from the design of the algorithm.

These algorithms were developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 1998 by a dedicated working group. The European body admitted that GEA-1 contained a weakness. But it explained that it had been introduced to comply with export regulations which did not allow for stronger encryption. For GEA-2, the rules were relaxed at the time of its design, but the researchers were able to decrypt the traffic. They therefore recommend relying on the more robust GEA-3 and higher algorithm.

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Source : Le Monde Informatique

SNCF Réseau's new subsidiary, Terralpha, has arrived to market the bandwidth offered by the more than 20,000 km of fibre that snake through mainland France under the train tracks. As the fibres are pulled from town to town, they do not suffer from the slowdowns caused by the connections that operators put on each branch line.

In addition, this fibre network provides a national alternative to the network of the four major operators. The 2,000 alternative operators will now be able to interconnect a head office in Lille with its branch in Marseille, without having to wait for weeks for authorisation, without having to pay the high price imposed by their national competitor. And, above all, with better latency.

These more than 20,000 kilometres of fibre were already available for hire. But it was a case-by-case process: Since SNCF Réseau only provides 100 Gbit/s links, it was up to its customer to install a router at each end to carry its traffic. And apart from the major operators, no one knew how to install a router on these fibres.

To connect, Terralpha chose to partner with the Telehouse chain of colocation data centres. "Our strategy is to be present in the telecom marketplaces. That is to say, in the rooms reserved for the interconnections of operators in the data centres. The most important ones are on the TH2 campus of Telehouse in Paris, which brings together 300 telecom operators," argues Gabriel Chenevoy, Terralpha's CEO.

Especially since TH2 has a state-of-the-art computer system that monitors the 50,000 fibres running through its operator rooms one by one. The curvature and path of each fibre would be carefully studied.

Apart from Orange and SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad are also starting to sell bandwidth on their national networks to alternative operators. Kosc was previously the only independent infrastructure operator through which local providers could offer national connectivity to their customers. It is therefore the one that Terralpha is now competing with. After financial setbacks, Kosc was finally bought out a year ago by Altitude Infrastructure, an ex-alternative operator that has refocused its activity on fibre installation.

Although Altitude Infrastructure enjoys a good image with local authorities, its challenge remains to link together fibre segments scattered over the territory. This is where Terralpha claims to have a head start.

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Source : Le Mag IT

The Internet services of 500 customers, including banks and airlines, were inaccessible for several hours due to a breakdown at Akamai. This was not a cyber attack but a technical problem. The problems were caused by a mishandling of Akamai's DdoS protection service.

Among the customers affected are three major Australian banks: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac and ANZ. Australia Post was also affected, as was the airline Virgin Australia.

The latest major internet outage occurred last week and was caused by CDN Fastly. Many people were affected by the outage, including Europe.

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Source : Kulture Geek

Many territories still do not have access to a fast and efficient Internet connection in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and elsewhere in France. This is why the State and Arcep have developed the New Mobile Deal in order to address this problem by standardising mobile Internet coverage at national level.

Although the State is the initiator of this project, it is the mobile operators who manage it directly. Free, Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR are therefore responsible for the investment in the design of these new networks. Even though there are no subsidies, the State is in fact piloting this bold project and sharing its objectives with the operators, who must align themselves with it.

According to the State services, in collaboration with the local authorities, 509 areas are deemed to be priorities in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. 64 new additional sites are to be equipped in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region following the publication of the latest order on 9 April.

However, due to the region's many mountainous areas, installing the equipment necessary for the network to spread properly is much more difficult. This explains why the region has so many areas without access to a good Internet connection and why it needs special attention.

However, the health crisis makes this project much more difficult to implement and there are many delays.

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Source : ECOMNEWS

According to the latest figures published by the Agence nationale des fréquences (ANFR), France now has 25,105 authorised 5G sites, of which 14,284 have been declared technically operational by operators.

Up 3.7% over one month, the increase in the number of 5G sites owes much to the legacy of past networks - and especially 4G. The ANFR points out that "almost all of these 5G installations have been authorised on existing sites already used by 2G, 3G or 4G technologies" and that only two mobile sites in France host only 5G.

According to operator statements, 56.9% of the 25,105 5G sites authorised at the end of May are technically operational. The main trends of the deployment carried out in a scattered manner by the operators to date are now emerging.

Free confirms its attraction for the 700 MHz band for accelerated coverage of the territory. 16,683 5G sites are counted in this frequency band, of which 9,584 are declared technically operational.

Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR have adopted similar tactics. The three operators rely on the 2.1 GHz band, which is already used for 4G. At the end of May, they had 8,376 authorised 5G sites in this band, with 3,973 declared technically operational.

However, operators are not forgetting about the "queen band" of 5G, the 3.5 GHz band, as they seem determined to move on to this specific 5G band.

The ANFR counted 8,550 authorised 5G sites in this band at the end of May, of which 3,973 were declared technically operational. This bodes well for the further deployment of the new generation of mobile technology.

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Source : ZDnet

The broadband and ultra-broadband market observatory for the first quarter has just been published by Arcep. The regulator notes that "the number of very high-speed subscriptions rose by 1.1 million, i.e. a growth rate of 170% compared to the first quarter of 2020".

This means that "the number of very high-speed subscriptions has reached 15.7 million, and now represents more than half (51%) of the total number of Internet subscriptions in France (+9 points in one year) and 53% of the number of premises eligible for very high-speed access, up 6 points in one year".

The figures for fibre rollouts are also upbeat: "Public Initiative Networks have achieved their best deployment quarter ever and are outpacing private operator rollouts in AMII zones. The overall pace of deployment remains high in the first quarter of 2021, with 1.5 million FTTH lines".

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Source : Next Inpact

For about seven hours on the evening of 2 June, the numbers for the Samu (15), the police (17), the fire brigade (18) and the single European emergency number (112) were virtually inaccessible. Orange, through its CEO Stéphane Richard, had then presented "its deepest apologies". Then, early this morning, on 4 June, the historical operator announced that it had launched an "in-depth" internal investigation.

This announcement preceded the meeting of the interministerial crisis unit. "Things are back in order" and "the situation is back under control as I speak", declared Jean Castex at around 9am, at the end of this meeting which he chaired.

"We deplore the victims who may have been caused by this serious incident", confirmed the Prime Minister.

The head of government insisted that "it will be necessary to establish very clearly the cause of the events that occurred and above all the means to ensure that they do not happen again."

For the time being, Orange has already launched an in-depth internal investigation. The telephone operator's general inspectorate "will have to carry out the necessary investigations to identify the precise causes of this incident and issue recommendations to draw all the necessary lessons", Orange said.

Conclusions are expected within seven days. "In connection with the interministerial crisis unit, we set up yesterday evening a dedicated unit to resolve any local malfunctions that might appear," added the telephone operator, while "disturbances" still remained on 3 June "in a random manner".

When asked about the origin of this breakdown, Stéphane Richard already ruled out the hypothesis of a cyber attack. This incident is "more likely" due to "a software failure in (the) critical network equipment", i.e. the platforms responsible for routing calls.

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Source : Les Echos

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

France-IX Lyon will meet you on June 18th for a morning dedicated to the improvement of BtoB Internet exchanges thanks to LyonIX and GrenobliX infrastructures, the IXP / NAP of Lyon & Grenoble.

Details will be detailed during this videoconference:
- the IXP part, which improves Internet exchanges between users in a territory, reduces telecom costs, and secures and optimizes the network thanks to the multiple routes offered.
- the NAP part, which provides connected members with direct access to the operators present and their offers. We buy or sell any type of Telecom service with great flexibility.

On the agenda

• General presentation
• What is an IXP / NAP?
  • How does it work?
  • Economic & technical advantages
•  The IXP / NAP of Lyon and Grenoble
  • Members
  • Offers & services
  • Connection solutions
• Events & Tools
• Questions & Answers

Useful information

• Schedule from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
• Link of the videoconference sent by email two days before the event

 Register