2023-12-13 17:05:00
Few major infrastructure projects meet their deadlines and do not slip up financially. The France Very High Speed plan is one of them. Initiated under the presidency of François Hollande, just ten years ago, this vast fiber deployment project, whose overall cost is around 36 billion euros, has so far kept its promises. Today, 84% of French people have access to this technology, which allows them to benefit from ultra-fast Internet.
France is, in this regard, a leader on the Old Continent. Which is not to displease the executive: Jean-Noël Barrot, the Minister Delegate in charge of Digital and Telecoms, intends to welcome it this Thursday, during a trip to Dordogne and Gironde, where he will meet local elected officials, businesses and other telecoms players.
A complex project
No question of sulking ” success “ of this Very high speed plan, they say in Bercy, in view of the criticism it received in its early days. It must be said that this project, managed by the State, is on paper very complex. France was, for the occasion, divided into three distinct zones. First there are the so-called “very dense” areas – that is to say the large cities – which bring together 7.7 million residents. In these territories considered very profitable, the large operators (Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free) engage in “competition through infrastructure”. In other words: everyone deploys their network using their own funds.
Medium-sized towns and the outskirts of large cities, which represent 17 million premises, have for their part been deemed profitable if the networks are not duplicated. Here, a single operator (Orange or SFR) deploys fiber, with co-financing from their rivals. Finally, in the countryside and sparsely populated areas, judged to be of little or no profitability, the State has put its hand in the wallet to subsidize the networks qualified as “public initiative” (RIP) of the communities, which bring together 18 million premises.
The challenge of generalizing fiber
In ten years, this immense project has not been a long, quiet river. But disagreements and other rants have never critically hampered deployments. Each time, the government, operators, communities and Arcep, the telecoms regulator, have managed to come to an agreement to prevent the project from falling apart. Result: its first objective, which consisted of bringing very high speed to all French people – 80% of whom via fiber – in 2022, was met.
Riding on this dynamic, Emmanuel Macron wanted to go further. The President of the Republic extended the Very High Speed plan, promising that all French people would be able to access optical fiber in 2025. This ambition has long been defended by many parliamentarians and local elected officials. Today, having a good Internet connection is no longer a comfort, and is considered essential for both individuals and businesses.
Quality of service still problematic
However, this objective of “generalization of fiber”, they point out at Bercy, is not a walk in the park. Jean-Noël Barrot, operators and communities know it: the last premises to be connected are always the most difficult and the most expensive. While Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free have largely slowed down their deployments, to the great dismay of the executive and Arcep, the government recently signed a deal with Orange to relaunch them.
The other challenge is that of quality of service. Fiber networks have been the subject of severe criticism for years. To carry out their rapid deployments, operators have long called on subcontractors, many of whom, poorly paid and poorly trained, did not respect the rules of the art. Result: defects abound on the networks, and many subscribers complain of wild disconnections. Although the operators claim to have taken measures to resolve these problems, the situation has not improved to date. If France has undoubtedly made a good attempt with its Very High Speed plan, its transformation is not, at all, won.
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