This week, the Arcep unveiled its assessment of fiber optic deployments in the second quarter. And even though the milestone was reached under difficult containment conditions, half of French homes are now eligible for fiber optic cable. In fact, 1.2 million new lines were deployed between April and June. Fiber optic coverage of the territory is progressing at a "high rate", even if "the health situation related to Covid-19 has not allowed operators to continue the significant acceleration observed at the end of last year".

Despite severe restrictions due to the health crisis, work continued at a rate equivalent to that at the beginning of the year: around 400,000 lines per month. The equivalent of a town like Nemours or Granville... every day.

This dynamic allows us to calmly envisage the "five million new lines" in 2020 predicted by Minister Cédric O. If this pace is maintained for another two years, the executive will have kept its promise to bring fiber to 80% of French homes by the end of 2022.

However, the Arcep is showing its vigilance in one particular area: medium-sized cities. Indeed, in 2018 Orange and SFR made a commitment to the government and the regulator to cover them entirely with optical fiber by the end of 2020. And with 10.5 million connectable lines, they are still a long way off. Orange covers only 67% of households in the municipalities to which it has committed and SFR 75%.

In theory, they have nine months left to complete 5.5 million lines - an almost impossible task. Arcep's only concession: the deadline can be postponed by three months following the health crisis, as provided for in the government order on the extension of deadlines linked to the coronavirus. Even with this additional quarter, "the pace of deployments will be critical over the next few quarters and the Arcep will continue to be attentive to the efforts of operators", writes the Telecoms gendarme, who clearly has no intention of slackening on the subject.

 Read the article

Source : Les Echos

The fixed Internet access service provided by SFR and Bouygues Telecom was unavailable for several hours last week. Indeed, the DNS (Domain Name System) servers of several operators were affected. "The DNS servers are used by all companies. It's a bit like a telephone directory. They translate the domain name of a website into an IP address to talk to it. So they have a key role as gatekeepers. They are often among the Top 3 critical applications for ISPs," explains Ronan David, head of strategy at Efficient IP.

The inability to connect, for most SFR and Bouygues Telecom customers last Tuesday, results from the fact that you use an operator's DNS servers by default when you subscribe to its fixed Internet access service. However, they could have connected to other DNS servers by configuring the network connection of their box because the DNS servers are always ready to communicate with everyone. And this is their weakness. "Since they are by definition very open, they are also very vulnerable. They are therefore prime targets for hackers," says Ronan David.

This type of aggression is common among ISPs, but SFR and Bouygues Telecom consider it particularly virulent. According to the Dutch DDoS protection organization NBIP, the DDoS (or denial of service) attack has also affected other ISPs in Belgium and the Netherlands. It recorded volumetric peaks of nearly 300 Gbit/s in volume. A level well above the average. Ronan David confirms, "The volume of 89% of DDos DNS attacks is below 50 Gbit/s. Here, it was up to 300 Gbit/s, six times more than usual. This is completely atypical."

This was a reflection attack, for example. "In the case of a DDos type DNS attack by amplification, there is one target, the DNS server, and then there is reflection, which means that other DNS servers are used to amplify the attacks and overwhelm the target server with requests so that it is no longer available," explains Ronan David.

Were other ISPs' DNS servers used to amplify the attack? Were SFR and Bouygues Telecom specifically targeted, or was their failure a collateral damage of a larger operation? Mystery, but this prospect would be daunting for all operators.

Another enigma remains to be solved: who are the attackers? Several hypotheses can be put forward. It could be a rogue gang... Unless the objective was political: to test communications and bring down an Internet gateway. In this case, it could be hostile foreign powers.

 Read the article

Source : 01net

Rezopole, in partnership with 1Kubator, invites you on Tuesday, September 29th at 6:30pm at 13ᵉ meet RezoGirls. A new round table with the theme "E-reputation: beware of the boomerang effect! ».

There are a multitude of expressions to name e-reputation: web-reputation, cyber-reputation, digital reputation, web reputation, Internet reputation or online reputation. But in all cases, it is the digital image that the Internet reflects of a person, natural or legal person or brand.

E-reputation therefore delivers elements about a person or a brand, without them being able to fully control them. Warren Buffet had this sentence: "It takes 20 years to build a reputation, but only five minutes to destroy it". This has never been truer than it is today, in our ultra-connected world.

At a time of fake news, revenge porn, harassment, etc. how to manage its e-reputation? Our four speakers will discuss the subject based on their respective experiences and provide relevant advice.

Program

Register

Speakers

Specialized in economic intelligence and expert in social networks, Fanny Loubaton has been assisting companies in their digital communication for the past ten years. From the definition of the strategy to its deployment, she helps structures, actors and collaborators to reveal themselves on social networks. She offers a qualitative and educational support around social networks to guarantee the good visibility of the message and the increase in skills of the teams around the digital.

 

 

 

Marie Marcotte is a lawyer in Lyon. Her practice focuses on commercial and liability law, intellectual property and innovation law, as well as digital and e-commerce law.
Throughout her career, she has advised and defended companies of all sizes, from very small businesses to large groups, operating in a variety of sectors such as digital, telecommunications, mass distribution, franchising and industry.

 

 

About RezoGirls       

 

You are a woman and you work in the Network & Telecom sector or more broadly in the digital sector and you would like to meet other RezoGirls ?

Come and share your experience in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere...

 

 

 

About 1Kubator 

 

The leading network of start-up incubators in France, 1Kubator supports, provides office space and finances innovative and digital projects. In 10 months, entrepreneurs go from the idea to the market, and to fundraising 1ʳᵉ.

 

 

            

 

Crédit pictogrammes : Santé vecteur créé par freepik - fr.freepik.com

 

 

 

 

Rezopole will meet you on September 24th for a videoconference dedicated to the improvement of BtoB Internet exchanges thanks to LyonIX and GrenobliX infrastructures.

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 of Rezopole
• What is an IXP/NAP?
  • How does it work?
  • Economic & technical advantages
• LyonIX & GrenoblIX infrastructures
  • Rezopole members
  • Offers & services
  • Connection solutions
• Rezopole Events & Tools
• Questions & Answers

Useful information

• Schedule from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m.
• Link of the videoconference sent by email a few days before the event

 Register

The United Kingdom confirms its change of position vis-à-vis the Chinese equipment manufacturer Huawei with a total exclusion of its infrastructures. By the end of next year, operators will no longer be able to purchase Huawei equipment. They will also have to take the necessary measures to remove all equipment from their networks, both new and old, before 2027.

This decision is likely to have an impact on the pace of 5G deployment in the country. A delay estimated at three years at a cost of £2 billion.

A change of course justified by national security and the preservation of the economy, even if serious tensions are expected with China in the coming months.

A spokesman for Huawei logically referred to a disappointing decision. The telecom equipment manufacturer assures that the restrictions imposed on its activity by the United States are not insurmountable obstacles and calls on the British government to reconsider its position.

The United Kingdom, as a member of Five Eyes, is particularly sensitive to the threats agitated by the USA and the pressures calling into question these privileged exchanges between countries.

It is also a reaction to the recent events which have seen China trying to regain control of Hong Kong despite months of demonstrations.

On the operators' side, we are blaming the blow. It will take them about five years to remove Huawei equipment from their networks.  

 Read the article

Source : GNT

On 26 June, Bouygues Telecom announced that it had "signed an exclusive agreement with Euro-Information, a Crédit Mutuel group company, with a view to acquiring 100% of the capital of its subsidiary Euro-Information Telecom (EIT) and entering into an exclusive distribution partnership". Little known to the general public, this operator markets its packages under the Crédit Mutuel Mobile, CIC Mobile, NRJ Mobile, Auchan Telecom or Cdiscount Mobile brands. Existing since 2015, it has its own core network and agreements as a virtual operator with Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR.

An agreement that "is fully in line with Bouygues Telecom's growth strategy". EIT is France's leading alternative operator with a distribution network of "more than 4,200 Crédit Mutuel local branches and CIC bank branches, 30,000 customer advisers" and a customer service team of more than 550 people.

As a reminder, Bouygues Telecom claimed a fleet of mobile rate plans excluding MtoM of "11.7 million customers at the end of March 2020" while Euro-Information Telecom announced that it had passed the "2 million customer mark" at the end of November 2019. A purchase that could therefore enable Bouygues Telecom to come back neck and neck with Free Mobile and its 13.3 million subscribers.

It is also specified in the press release that "the acquisition price includes a fixed portion of 530 million euros payable at closing and an additional portion of between 140 and 325 million euros, subject to the achievement of economic performance criteria and payable over several years".

Subject to the agreement of the competent authorities, the operation should be finalised by the end of 2020.

 Read the article

Source : Nextinpact

Submitted to Parliament and presented on 25 June at an online press conference, this new edition of the report on the state of the Internet in France sets out the key developments in the various components of the fixed and mobile Internet networks for 2019.

The aim is to ensure, through regulation, that the Internet continues to develop as a common good in which the user is the ultimate arbiter.

An entire chapter is devoted, for the first time, to the issue of the environmental impact of digital technology. A first step towards a "green barometer" that Arcep wishes to set up to make available to the public the most relevant data on the environmental footprint of networks, terminals and uses.

Although this is a report on 2019, the Arcep also details its observations and the first lessons learnt from the period of the health crisis and the spring 2020 containment, which had a strong impact on network uses.

Other issues such as quality of service, data interconnection, the transition to IPv6, net neutrality, the opening of terminals and the role of platforms are also addressed in this report. 

 Read the article

Source : Arcep

Rezopole will meet you on July 2nd for a videoconference dedicated to the improvement of BtoB Internet exchanges thanks to LyonIX infrastructures.

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 of Rezopole
• What is an IXP/NAP?
  • How does it work?
  • Economic & technical advantages
• Rezopole's infrastructures & members
  • Offers & services
  • Connection solutions
• Rezopole Events & Tools
• Questions and Answers

Useful information

• Schedule from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m.
• Link of the videoconference sent by email a few days before the event

 Register

Rezopole's technical team is looking forward to seeing you on Friday 26th June for a virtual Rezopole User Group.

This edition will focus on VXLAN EVPN architectures with a REX on the deployment of this technology.

We will also discuss public databases dedicated to peering and will take a look back at the traffic profiles observed during the containment period.

Useful information

• Schedule from 9:30 am to 12:00 pm
• Confirm your participation before June 24th
• The videoconference link will be sent a few days before the event

 Register 

 "This text is written in Covid-19 confinement, which shows the enormous impact of the Internet in our daily lives, and its importance in helping us to continue our activities in telework or tele-education.

Exchange nodes such as those managed by Rezopole have a very important role in these periods of increased traffic. The first 100 Gbps client was set up on LyonIX at the very beginning of the Covid-19 crisis.

Looking back at 2019, the following highlights, detailed in the report, are worth noting:

• Migration of the core network to a new, latest-generation 100 Gb infrastructure,
• Securing links (redundancy) and BGP routing,
• Opening of new POPs related to their potential for new members,
• Reinforcement of the interconnection with the Swiss IXPs (CIXP & SwissIX),
• Survey on Telecom needs in the Alps with local players,
• First 24/7 BGP outsourcing services.

The IXP market is transforming towards increased service provision, and Rezopole will continue its transformation in 2020 to adapt to this evolution.

Thank you for your interest in our activities, I hope you enjoy reading. »

Philippe Duby,

President of the Rezopole Association

 Read the report

Organized by Mon Territoire Numérique every year in March in Deauville, the RIP Estates General finally took place in video format. The meeting of public initiative networks made it possible to gauge the impact of the health crisis on the very high-speed broadband projects carried by local authorities.

At the end of March, InfraNum warned that a complete halt to the fibre optic deployment projects would be a "catastrophe" likely to cause 12 months of inertia. Today, the Federation of Digital Infrastructure Industrialists is breathing - a little. Its president, Étienne Dugas, says "We have worked on the ordinances, on the various decrees with more or less success" in order to "avoid the complete shutdown of the industrial tool, which is done".

Overall, activity fell, on average, to around 30% of nominal production during containment. This made it possible to keep the industrial facilities in operation, although the situation varied greatly from one region to another.

Today, the time has come for a return to load: 50% activity last week, 70% this week. At any rate, these are the figures announced by Julien Denormandie, the French Minister for Urban Affairs and Housing, who has been in charge of HSBB issues since 2017. But Etienne Dugas warns that they should be taken with caution: "In terms of productivity, we are still far from the rates we could have had previously".

This observation is corroborated by Lionel Recorbet for SFR FttH: "We are going to have a lot, a lot of difficulties to get back to 100%". Cyril Luneau, Director of Community Relations at Orange, also warns that a return to pre-crisis fibre deployment levels "is not for now". The Covid episode will have "a serious and profound impact on the calendars and milestones for the end of this year, and no doubt for 2022", i.e. the deadlines for the operator's commitment in the AMII zone.

The operators therefore warn that at this stage it is difficult to quantify the additional delays. Pascal Rialland, President of Covage, nevertheless risks predicting a postponement of deployment of "4 to 6 months in 2021" for the 75,000 fibre optic lines that Covage was to deploy in 2020 in Calvados.

Schedule slippages will be inevitable and consequently delays in commercialization could ultimately weigh on the economy of the projects carried by the communities. As will the more immediate additional costs associated with health precautions.

It is not possible at this stage to put a figure on these additional costs. InfraNum has also commissioned an impact study for the end of the month. The Federation of Industrialists intends to use this work as a basis for the recovery plan promised by the government for next September.

While waiting for a clearer picture of the impact of the health crisis, the participants in the Estates General of the RIPs preferred to insist on other levers for accelerating deployment in order to respond to the digital impatience.

On the industrial side, the immediate cash needs of companies in the sector were highlighted in order to be able to continue their activity. At the height of the crisis, infrastructure operators have multiplied initiatives to relieve the cash flow of their subcontractors (reductions in payment deadlines, advances and other subsidies). Now, the idea is to "put more agility" in the payments of France THD subsidies to local authorities, Julien Denormandie announces.

But the President of the French Telecoms Federation, Arthur Dreyfuss, tempers "the answer cannot only be public money". Beyond new financial help, the Secretary General of Altice France is waiting for "all those little everyday obstacles" to the deployment of fibre to be lifted. Many grievances have been voiced for years that many HSBB actors would like to see finally heard. In this exceptional situation, "we have to beat the iron", Patrick Chaize sums up. By making, for example, digital infrastructures an essential asset, argues the Senator of Ain and President of Avicca. An approach allowing the deployment to overcome some of these obstacles, also believes Arthur Dreyfuss, deploring that "we do not benefit from the right that gas or electricity enjoy.

An idea that does not convince Julien Denormandie, for whom such a status could be misunderstood by the French deprived of a good connection. The minister prefers to go through other texts for certain operational advances to which he says he is "open". On the other hand, concerning the very pressing question of co-ownership, the minister kicks the ball, referring to the "balances" of the Elan law. Operators and local authorities have therefore not finished with this painstaking work.

 Read the article

Source : DegroupNews

Margrethe Vestager, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of digital technologies, is reported to have called the European telecoms ministers to order so that the allocation of the 5G spectrum does not fall too far behind schedule.

The EU's current objectives in this area, set for 2016, are to bring 5G to market in at least one major city in each EU country by the end of 2020, as well as in all urban areas and major transport axes by 2025.

The Vice-President's intervention would follow a request from Croatia to review this action plan and timetable.

Many countries, including Spain, Austria, Portugal, Poland and the Czech Republic, have still not allocated their first 5G frequencies. Procedures have been postponed due to the pandemic and subsequent containment measures.

In France, auctions are expected to be postponed until September at the latest for a subsequent deployment. Commercialization is therefore possible this fall.

 Read the article

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.

 Read the article

Source : ZDNet

The Urban School of Lyon continues its conferences entitled "The Wednesdays of the Anthropocene". This week's theme: the impact of digital technology on regional planning with Cécile Diguet, urban planner, director of the Urban Planning and Territories Department of the Paris Region Institute and Jean-Vincent Bayarri, architect of Information Systems at the Metropolis of Lyon.

As a partner, Rue89Lyon publishes a podcast of these forums. Jean-Vincent Bayarri, also wrote the text below.

The intelligent city relies on important digital infrastructures, especially data centers. How are these infrastructures deployed on the territory? What issues are raised by their spatial integration? Constraints or opportunities for an ecological factory of the city? Are digital actors the new protagonists of the urban project?

Initially, containment...

Videoconferencing, streaming, telecommuting, e-commerce, online gaming are in this period of confinement even more widely consumed than usual by the French.

Many articles in the press explain how consumption induced on "networks" alone can be problematic, at the risk of "slowing down" or even "paralysing" the Internet.

"The networks"

Above all, the Internet is a set of interconnected machines, i.e. multiple routes, managed by a multitude of actors: operators, public or private structures, associations, large companies. The term "network" is actually vague since it is a multitude of interconnected networks. At the end of the chain is a server infrastructure that must meet the high demand observed in this period of containment.

While it is true that some networks can sometimes be scarce resources, particularly mobile networks, most are well sized in France to carry the traffic.

So when the website of a hypermarket brand, overwhelmed by the requests of confined consumers, displays a message asking to wait, is it the fault of the "network"? Certainly not.

The problem can often come from the last link in the chain, the "server" carrying the resource and the content consumed. How do you know when and where to align sufficient resources to meet demand?

Datacenters

This is the importance of data centers, since they allow multiple servers to be quickly assigned to specific tasks.

And this capability also applies to the datacenters themselves! Just as the Internet is meshed and decentralized, the strategy adopted by companies like Netflix is a very wide distribution of data centers: on several continents, in several cities, and even as close as possible to the user, partly at the ISPs themselves. It is also a common practice in most companies to distribute resources across multiple data centers for reasons of security, redundancy and high availability.

Proximity, a technical, economic and strategic asset

Some cities have a considerable asset: a GIX (Global Internet eXchange point), i.e. a local Internet exchange point. In Lyon, this is LyonIX, which is managed by Rezopole. Companies or administrations that wish to do so can connect locally to this GIX and exchange via the Internet "locally".

Thus in the Lyon metropolitan area, a very significant part of Internet traffic is consumed by Google services (Maps in particular). Since Google is present on LyonIX, access is not only instantaneous (very low latency) but also free of charge. The rest of the Internet traffic is sold through the (paying) pipes of a forwarding agent.

Beyond purely telecom costs, the logic of economic development is clear: the more Internet infrastructure is present locally, the more investors are attracted to build local datacenters. This rhymes with more jobs, more value created, and an easier digital transition.

The interest is also strategic, since putting your data in the "cloud" means putting it in someone else's datacenters. A varied and local offer of datacenters therefore makes it possible to keep company data on national soil, in better security conditions (RGPD for example), which represents a certain digital sovereignty.

Digital transition, ecological?

"To save the planet, print this message only if necessary". This maxim could almost sum up the digital transition issue by itself.

Videoconferencing, the development of mobile digital counter applications, these are just a few examples of very concrete applications - made possible by the presence of these infrastructures, these networks, these data centres in the city - which also facilitate the ecological transition.The data centres themselves are working on this with the reduction of the energy efficiency factor or the reuse of heat produced by the district heating of the surrounding area, or even a 100% operation on renewable energies.

The digital revolution has given data centers a now multiple importance (economic, social, ecological) in the city as well as other essential structures. A central link in regional planning and the digital and ecological transitions, which are far from being in opposition, are perfectly complementary.

 Read the article

Source : Rue89Lyon

RIPE, Europe's Internet governance body, opposes a proposal to reshape basic Internet protocols supported by the Chinese government, Chinese telecommunications companies and network equipment provider Huawei.

The proposal, called "New IP", is a reworked version of the TCP/IP standards to support new technologies. It includes a "shutdown protocol" to shut down faulty parts of the Internet and a new governance model that centralizes the Internet and puts it in the hands of a few critical node operators.

Submitted last year to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and published last month by the Financial Times, the new proposal immediately drew criticism. To the general public and privacy advocates, it is an obvious attempt to hide Internet censorship features behind a technical overhaul of the TCP/IP protocol stack.

In short, an attempt by the Chinese government to export and impose its autocratic views on the rest of the Internet and its infrastructure. Especially since several countries such as Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia have given their support.

On its blog, the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, West Asia and the former USSR, RIPE NCC, has officially spoken out against China's new IP proposal.

Marco Hogewoning, acting director of public policy and Internet governance at RIPE NCC, says "Do we need New IP? I don't think we do. [...] Although there are some technical challenges with the current Internet model, I don't think we need a new architecture to solve them."

Any attempt to overhaul Internet protocols should be left to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and not the ITU, where political influence is more important than technically sound arguments, he said. RIPE is also concerned about the desire to change the decentralized nature of the Internet.

The organization expressed its concerns in a paper sent to the ITU in February this year: "RIPE NCC is deeply concerned about what has been proposed here.[...] We are particularly concerned that this proposal represents an opportunity to move away from the traditional 'bottom-up' decision-making model. We also believe that the technical justification presented is flawed and find the alternative designs suggested to be both unrealistic and unproven".

With the new proposal due to enter the test phase in 2021, Hogewoning urges national Internet governance organizations to contact local decision-makers and recommend voting against it as well as a vote at a later date.

 Read the article

Source : ZDNet