Free proposes two concrete actions to facilitate the switch of ADSL subscribers to fiber as universal broadband service
Free wants to set up a universal broadband service, for example at 10 Mbit/s, to guarantee French households a minimum Internet connection when the copper network reaches its last hours.
As many as 72% of fiber optic buildings and more than 15 million FTTH subscribers, the conversion to fiber is making its way. Only for reasons of technical performance and obsolescence, but also efficiency, costs and ecological footprint, it is not relevant to preserve and maintain both the new fiber optic networks and the historic copper network. That is why Orange wants the technical closure of copper to be phased in from 2023 and to be completed by 2030. “In accordance with the framework defined by the December 2020 market analysis decisions, Orange sent its draft copper network closure plan to Arcep in January 2022, which put it up for public consultation until April 4, 2022. The regulator publishes the responses to the public consultation today”announced the Telekom police on July 29.
Contributors include Bouygues Telecom, SFR, Free, Canal+ and even infrastructure operators such as Altitude and Axione, but also Avicca and Infranum. For its part, Free continues to favor a commercial closure at the address as soon as it becomes eligible for the 4 main operators.
Just to make copper quenching easier, “There is a need to be able to reasonably reliably determine matches between lines and addresses appropriate for fiber and copper lines,” he says, recalling that Orange has chosen a proprietary copper address repository, choosing not to open it. Conversely, the fiber optic operators have chosen different address storage for the fiber optics, which does not facilitate comparisons.
“Faced with the inevitable disappearance of copper, whether or not this disappearance is organized within the framework of a formalized decommissioning plan, it seems to us necessary that the State take two accompanying measures,” states the operator of Xavier Niel in his response to the consultation. The first proposal advocates the deployment of a universal broadband service, for example 10 Mbit, guaranteeing that every household has a minimum internet service, enabling teleworking and teleeducation, “This safety net seems essential when the copper connection will disappear from all homes and there will inevitably be problematic cases of impossibility of FttH connection, at least under market conditions”.
The second measure would be for the state to provide financial support to enable certain works to be carried out on private land. “We understand that authorities want to maximize the effective connection rate to FttH over time. However, the lack of infrastructure to receive fiber optics inside private property is one of the main obstacles to the connection, the internal infrastructure. These costs, such as for water, electricity or sanitation, are the responsibility of the owner and should not be charged to the operators. In connection with the copper dying, it seems desirable to think of financial support for carrying out the necessary work, similar to insulation work. According to the operator, these two support measures could ultimately make it easier to switch to fiber optics without running the risk of households being left without Internet.
As for Orange, Free believes that it could include an additional objective aimed at strongly encouraging the migration of ADSL subscribers to fiber. A certain number of them, for example, never migrate outside of the move, although others switch to FTTH once they are eligible. Still, for many, migration can be lengthy and costly.
This article is from the Univers FreeBox website
