Communities are particularly upset. Avicca, an association that represents 230 of them particularly involved in digital, no longer hides its fed up with the slowdown in the deployment of fiber by operators in large cities and medium-sized towns. This Thursday, she split several vitriolic articles to denounce, with supporting figures, this situation.
In large urban centers and very dense areas, nothing is going well with the association. Of the 106 municipalities concerned, bringing together 7.7 million dwellings, none of them is fully covered in fiber. In the fourth quarter of 2022, 103 of them had a completeness rate of over 80%, i.e. only three more than in the previous quarter. Avicca fears that Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free have completely relaxed their efforts. And that certain pockets of dwellings find themselves quite simply forgotten.
“Orange is still the only operator to invest other than anecdotally in this very dense area, deplores the association. There is no indication of the beginning of the beginning of the inclination of the other operators to intervene in these municipalities where, however, they all had to fight to deploy the fiber there. »
Avicca, which relies on its own data and figures from Arcep, the telecoms regulator, has even found that the level of completeness is decreasing in 14 municipalities! This means, recalls the association, “that more new housing is being built there than new optical sockets”. « If the decline is slight in Fontenay-aux-Roses, Suresnes, Sceaux, Puteaux, Rueil-Malmaison, Saint-Cloud, Champs-sur-Marne and Bois-Colombes (-1%), it is -2% in Plessis- Robinson and -3% in Meylan, Châtenay-Malabry, Noisy-le-Sec, Malakoff and Bobigny”, she gets annoyed. Avicca is not the only player to criticize the very strong slowdown in the deployment of fiber in these territories. Arcep does not hide its concern either. But remember that operators are not subject to any obligation in these densely populated territories, where the rule is that of competition by infrastructure.
Big delays in medium-sized cities
The situation is different in the so-called “moderately dense” areas, bringing together medium-sized towns and the outskirts of large agglomerations. Orange and SFR are committed to bringing fiber to these 3,315 municipalities, bringing together around 16 million homes and dwellings. Problem: the account is not there. “These areas, which should have been fully completed by the end of 2022, only account for 11% of the municipalities actually completed”plague the association.
This is particularly critical of Orange. « Of the 377 municipalities [où la couverture en fibre est terminée]52% of them come under SFR which, however, only has 17% of municipalities in medium-dense areas to make fully connectablenotes the Avicca. On the other hand, 38 municipalities still have no fiber connection, and 100% of them come under the incumbent operator Orange! » If 80% of French people can benefit from fiber, the end of the deployment of this technology, which the government hopes for 2025, promises to be difficult to say the least.
