During the Viva Tech exhibition, Cisco explains to the Digital Factory the "5G rural first" project carried out in the United Kingdom. Led by the American company, this consortium of 29 players aims to find a business model to deploy 5G in rural areas and enable operators to make it profitable.

"To start investing in 5G, it is not possible to rely on the consumer demand of the general public, a large part of which is connected in 4G. 5G investments are very important and people are not willing to pay more for their subscriptions", says Cisco's director of innovation, Guillaume de Saint Marc. It has to be said that we must therefore turn to BtoB and rely on the digitalization of the various industrial sectors.

The principle is to multiply the pilots and experiments with 5G, 4G or WiFi. To this end, four industrial sectors, developed outside cities, were explored: AgriTech, transport, energy and tourism.

The fields of energy and tourism have been explored in the north of Scotland. On the tourism side, ferries were connected throughout their journeys, allowing connectivity to all passengers and a constant link between ferries and captains.

On the energy side, this territory has three offshore wind farms. It is necessary to connect them in order to "anticipate and understand the production level at a given moment and be able to absorb the energy produced by these wind turbines in real time", explains Guillaume de Saint Marc.

In the agricultural sector, the start-up Afimilk offers connected collars to monitor the temperature, rumination cycle, heart rate of cows...

In parallel, a project to identify soil quality by drone was carried out. "This is not new, but 5G is accelerating the deployment of these technologies", said Cisco's Director of Innovation.

But that's not all, since there are many uses: connect a salmon farm, monitor the water in some schools to detect legionella, test broadcast via 5G.  The aim is always to minimize the cost of its development by multiplying these uses.

 Read the article

Source : L'Usine Digitale

The auction framework for obtaining 5G frequencies has just been formalised by the Government. This framework letter, signed by the Minister for Cohesion of the Territories and the Secretary of State to the Minister of Economy, should enable Arcep to develop the process.


This letter defines in particular the constraints that will weigh on the winning operators. On the one hand, on the wallet side: it is a question of finding a "balance" between making the State's frequency assets grow and preserving the operators' capacity to invest in infrastructure. While both departments agree that "valuation should leave room for network development", they ask that "price is a substantial criterion for allocations".

On the other hand, on the coverage side: the Government warns that "the commercial service will have to be launched from 2020 to cover several cities" in return for the 5G licences awarded.

However, 5G deployment obligations will not be as stringent as those imposed to extend 4G last year throughout the country.


As for companies, the Arcep will have to "ensure that the operators who will benefit from authorisation will enable vertical players to apply for and benefit from 5G services under financial and operational conditions adapted to their needs, including in sparsely populated areas of the territory".

The Government has set the bar high by asking for the best of both worlds. It remains for the Arcep to include all this in the specifications of the 5G auctions scheduled for next autumn.

 Read the article

Source : DegroupNews

Free's parent company has just sold its passive mobile telecommunications infrastructure in France and Italy to Cellnex. This Spanish operator is acquiring all the Italian pylons and more than 70% of the French infrastructure for $2 billion.  That is nearly 10,000 sites in both countries.

Iliad and Cellnex will be partners in the management and development of Iliad Tower Co for the French business. This service contract includes a construction program for 4,500 custom-built sites.

Iliad's Chief Executive Officer, Thomas Reynaud, explains that "this operation is part of an industrial logic that accelerates the deployment of 4G and 5G networks and increases Iliad's investment capacity. It will enable the efficient deployment of tomorrow's infrastructures for the benefit of all operators and also aims to better meet the challenges of territorial coverage".

 Read the article

Source : Le Monde Informatique

In an interview with the Opinion, the President of the French Telecommunications Regulatory Authority gave an update on the upcoming arrival of 5G, the audiovisual law and the need to modernise European competition law.

For Sébastien Soriano, manufacturers will be at the heart of the 5G award even if they will not be part of the licensing process. Indeed, it is "all the actors of the economy who will in the future be users of networks linked to the Internet of Things (IoT)". But it is up to the Telecom sector to enable this evolution. "Today, operators are focused on standard offers. Their core business is the consumer market, not the corporate market, and the future is certainly there". Especially since companies do not yet seem ready for this frequency. "Last year, the Arcep offered them the possibility of making pilots in 5G, without much success. In the short term, it is therefore not a bad thing to reserve 5G for major telecom operators. Our bet is that they will change the way they work and make tailor-made solutions to meet the needs of companies. They didn't do it with 4G, which is what many large groups complain about". It is possible to imagine that 5G licences could be granted to telecoms operators in return for obligations or commitments to improve their offers to companies. "Tomorrow the Arcep could become an arbitrator in charge of settling disputes between operators and their customers concerning the relevance of the offers of the former to the demands of the latter". Contrary to popular belief, France is not falling behind in 5G. This one is still planned for next year. "The government is in the process of completing its scoping letter. For our part, we will put our draft procedure, including the operator-business relationship, out for consultation at the end of May/beginning of June. By the end of the year, operators will know how many 5G frequencies they each have, their costs and the obligations attached to them".

According to him, the audiovisual sector, in the midst of a transition, will probably no longer control its distribution network in the long term. Just like the car of tomorrow, the television set could be transformed into a voice assistant. "The audiovisual sector must be able to access the 5G services of telecom operators, such as SNCF or Carrefour, and we can even imagine an appropriate obligation for this specific sector and everything related to culture and pluralism [...] All companies must have access to these infrastructures and of course the audiovisual sector. In addition, I think that this would allow this sector to deal more calmly with the question of the future of DTT if it has access to 5G". Having defended the operators in their conflict with TF1 last year, he believes that "it is the big chains that manage to extract value from these negotiations, which raises a question about pluralism. The audiovisual law could provide a framework where we are currently in a purely commercial negotiation. I am confident that the law will provide a framework with flexible, non-discriminatory, reasonable and cost-reflective rules".

Regarding a possible consolidation of Telecom in France, the President of the Arcep is firm. "There is no news on this subject. Arcep's priority is investment [...] We have reached a model in which prices are attractive to the customer and investment capacity is high: these expenses have increased by 37% in three years, to nearly 10 billion euros annually. Why change a model that works? " However, Mr. Soriano considers that this is not enough to resist the Gafa and the takeover of new intermediaries. "In the long run, the end customer may no longer have to deal with the telecom operator. The latter would become a simple supplier of commodities to smartphone manufacturers, who would then take over margins and customer relations. [...] This is a global risk and an additional reason to focus on terminal regulation". For him, competition law could solve this problem provided that it "is part of a clear vision of the economy and globalization. For this to happen, competition law must be adapted to the economy of the 21st century. Today, in a growing number of sectors, the challenge is to concentrate the strike force (market share, data, R&D, rare talents, etc.) to increase scale effects. To meet this challenge, European competition law must be more concerned with innovation". According to the interviewee, there are two possibilities: to make access to structuring innovation platforms non-discriminatory and to ensure that they are openly accessible to the European ecosystem. "The second challenge is to create scale effects to participate in global competition. ...] In a targeted way, competition law must make it possible to find a compromise on these technological and innovation issues".

 Read the article

Source : L'Opinion

In this document, you will find a retrospective of our actions and events in Rezopole over the past year. Among the information to remember: the opening of a new IXP in Annecy, named AnnecIX, with two members already in place; the arrival of new members such as the major content provider Akamai; the achievement of Datadock certification allowing support for the training courses offered by Rezopole; and of course the must-see Aperezo events held in Grenoble last June and November. Much more information is detailed in this new annual report.

We invite you to download it in pdf format from this link.

Have a good reading!

Signed on 28 March, this strategic agreement between the two operators of French operators was concluded for a period of 20 years. It concerns access to their respective infrastructures.

Indeed, Kosc Telecom provides its FFTH collection infrastructure via its bitstream offer. This allows its new partner to enrich its catalogue of services and complete its offer of residential collection on existing copper support (xDSL).
Ielo-Liazo, for its part, is opening up access to its national fibre network via a new industrial NRO optical unbundling offer. This will enable Kosc Telecom to deliver high quality services and strengthen the national coverage of its Enterprise Fibre network.

This long-term partnership between these two operators, specialists in the wholesale of telecom products, represents for Ielo-Liazo a concrete application of its strategy aimed at offering the enterprise market a unified infrastructure offer for operators. While it is a complementary step for Kosc in its strategy to offer its customers operators 100% of the lines available in France.

 Read the press release

Source : Kosc Telecom

In order to launch the new generation of mobile networks, operators must be allocated frequencies by the end of the year. The first 5G antennas will thus be able to flourish and the flow rates will explode as early as 2020.

Across Europe, the 5G flagship band is the one between 3.4 GHz and 3.8 GHz - 400 MHz theoretically available to operators to water their customers with high-speed Internet.

The only problem is that, in France, this strip is already partially occupied by tenants who have no desire to empty the premises before the end of their lease in 2026. Among these cumbersome tenants are the Wimax licensees. This radio technology from the early 2000s was intended to provide broadband in rural areas through dedicated radio antennas.

A household is required and concerns two actors who are seated on 30MHz each: Bolloré Télécom (now Wifirst) throughout France and SFR in Ile-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

Arcep cannot therefore revoke their rights of use, even though frequencies are crucial for 5G. And Bolloré knows it. He is ideally placed today to recover. All he has to do is wait. The manufacturer can sit on it until 2026, use it himself to make 5G or even rent these frequencies to a third party.

But to make matters worse, the Arcep cut the 5G gang again a few months ago. The Telecom Constable has dedicated 50 MHz of his 400 MHz stock to "THD Radio" as part of the government plan to provide Very High Speed Internet access to all French people by 2022. And this until 2026.

On the Arcep side, it is stated that "there are no difficulties". Embarrassed, however, the regulator explained to Les Echos last summer that there could well be "only" 280 MHz of spectrum to auction... 30% less than the 400 MHz identified by Europe. Since the Authority has been studying its options, but nothing is moving.

 Read the article

Source : Les Echos.fr

Submitted last autumn by the Association of Alternative Telecommunications Operators, the request for an opinion to separate Orange's retail and infrastructure sectors into two separate entities was rejected on 30 January by the French Competition Authority. Indeed, the competition police do not consider it useful to give a favourable follow-up to the study of this referral for an advisory opinion.


The 45 operators that make up the AOTA protest against "repeated problems of access to the Civil Engineering of the Orange operator inherited from the national public domain of telecommunications, itself used by Orange to operate its copper network and constitute a passive shared fibre network currently unavailable in activated mode for competition."


However, the association does not intend to stop there, since it now plans to call on Brussels to defend its positions: "the association takes note of this decision by the independent administrative authority responsible for protecting consumers, whether residential or economic, from unfair practices on the part of private interests. It now also intends to refer the same matter to the European Union in order to obtain its opinion and, if necessary, to take the necessary corrective action to ensure that competition is conducted in a healthy and fair manner on the French telecommunications market."

 Read the article

Source : ZDNet

In recent weeks, there has been a real rush by mainstream operators of national scope on alternative BtoB operators. This is the case, for example, of Iliad's acquisition of a stake in Jaguar Network or Bouygues Télécom's acquisition of Keyyo and Nerim.
While the operators concerned did not comment, Channelnews interviewed 4 of their colleagues to decipher this new phenomenon: Patrice Bélie from Adista; David Brette from Sewan; Lionel Marchaud from Hexanet and Laurent Silvestri from OpenIP.


Structured around 5 questions, these interviews make it possible not only to analyse this movement but also its consequences: is this impulse not the consequence of the financial precariousness of alternative operators; is this process not the sign of the failure of Arcep's policy to perpetuate this ecosystem of alternative operators?
Topics such as the loss of innovation capacity, responsiveness and agility needed by the SME customers of these alternative operators and the future of this phenomenon are also discussed.

 Read the article

Source : Channelnews

Theme: HSBB in the Alps

Departments concerned: 38; 73; 74 and 01 (South Jura) with a focus on tourist areas (ski resorts, hotels).

Observation:

Broadband needs are exploding with the advent of "Over The Top" (OTT) networks and the strong growth of services such as Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, OCS, MyCanal...
Initial observations between the 2017 and 2018 Christmas holidays show a +60% increase in the throughput consumed in hotels and hotel residences. For these establishments, connections in Mbs will soon no longer be enough and requests in 1, 2, 3 or even 4 Gbs are beginning to arrive.

Work in synergy:

From now on, it is essential for telecom and Internet operators to organise themselves in order to be able to respond effectively to this need, which was yesterday emerging and is now very present.
This is the objective of yALPA! We must encourage the actors of Very High Speed deployment to meet and get to know each other better in order to consider future collaborations rather than planning, each on its own, investments in the same places.
The local DSPs (38, 73 and 74) do part of the work, but simply changing departments is complicated. Let us bet that by exchanging informally, a collective intelligence will make it possible to accelerate the arrival of really Very High Speed offers in the Alps (resorts but also valleys and plains).
It is understood that the results of these initial yALPA discussions will not have immediate effect. However, in the more or less short term, the problems currently encountered in terms of HSBB in tourist areas can be solved.

Registrations:

from Samuel Triolet (director of Rezopole) : striolet (from) rezopole.net

Calendar :

01/29/2019 : episode 001 at 9:00 am at the Isere County Council - 7 rue Fantin Latour, CS 41096, 38022 Grenoble cedex 1..

Morning program (9:00 am - 12:00 pm):

• welcome, coffee, pastries
• round table discussion: presentation of each participant
• brainstorming: ideas proposed and debriefed
• carto workshop: "bring your kmz!!!!" / "bring your own shape!!!!!"
• first conclusions and draft of an action plan; list of requests to be made to the Region, to the CSPs where
• applicable, cooperation commitments between operators present...

07/02/2019 : episode 002 at 9:00 am at Hub des Alpes (salle Altitude 193) - 37 avenue des Massettes, 73190 Challes-les-Eaux.

Morning program (9:00 am - 12:00 pm):

• welcome, coffee, pastries
• round table discussion: presentation of each participant
• Transalpinet presentation (study by Rezopole)
• room for improvement:
  • common carto tool.... Should we start where we wait another 10 years?
  • new backbone offers from external operators
  • territories without POPs

It took a year and a half of volunteer work to publish this study on the conditions of access to the Public Initiative Networks (PINs) deployed in France.

This tool is intended for the FFDN's associative ISPs but also for other operators of similar size. Two steps were necessary to achieve it: first, to collect information such as contracts and service catalogues, and then to analyse and present the information obtained. The objectives of this approach are to show the difficulty of associative ISPs to operate on certain networks, but also that it is possible to create conditions that allow them to operate since some RIPs bring them together.

In order to facilitate the visualization of the information collected from each public service delegate, the FFDN has set up a scoring system. Each service offer of a RIP was therefore evaluated using the same methodology containing objective criteria such as the amortisation period of the investments, the minimum number of subscribers and the price for the end user. The conditions proposed by each RIP were then summarized by assigning a score. From A to D, for the networks on which it would be possible to operate. And Z for networks where no activated offer is available in the catalogue or another equally blocking point.

On the map below, taken from the FTTH barometer, we can see that more than a third of the French departments have obtained a Z score. This means that no offer is adapted to the needs of associative ISPs.

 Read the article

Source : FFDN

Copper has long been overtaken by optical fibre, both in terms of throughput and bandwidth. And it is not about to stop there since the fiber will no longer be mono but multi-core! "Tomorrow, it will be possible to accommodate up to seven cores in the same fiber," explains Aurélien Bergonzo, Acome's Director of Technology, Research, Engineering and Prospective. It can even have up to 19 cores and reach throughputs of several hundred Gigabits per second.

The multiplication of the number of cores will have several impacts. This will significantly increase the capacity of a single cable but also reduce the deployment cost. This multi-core technology opens new horizons both from a technical and commercial point of view, especially for operators. Indeed, they will be able to offer companies new services adapted to demand such as QoS and speed.

Read the article

Source : ZDnet

After many technical and legal setbacks last year, the horizon is finally clear for Kosc. In mid-June, Banque des territoires (Caisse des Dépôts) invested 20 million euros in the capital of a new subsidiary, Kosc Infrastructures, in order to contain the operator's network assets. Guénaël Pépin reviews with the operator these last months in an article from Nextinpact.

While wholesale offers for operators are tending to become more widespread, hopes are essentially focused on Kosc. Indeed, the company, co-founded in 2016 by OVH, aims to break the duopoly of Orange and SFR in this market. To access the local loops of major operators and thus cover the whole of France, Kosc must connect its network to hundreds of NROs. In practice, it recovers Completel's national network to connect to Orange and SFR's local networks. Through these various networks, the company hopes to become a single control point for professional operators.

However, Kosc did not have the financial resources. 100 million over five years to cover the entire private deployment area. The financing of Caisse des Dépôts was therefore necessary. "The investment by the Bank of the Territories makes it possible to finance the implementation of the 100% fibre coverage strategy in the private zone" confirms Kosc. The creation of the Kosc Infrastructures subsidiary allows Caisse des Dépôts to limit its control to major infrastructure decisions. As for Kosc, this allows it to better link its private deployments with future contracts with RIPs. After a year and a half of competition between public and private infrastructure funds, the company's choice "naturally" turned to a RIP concession model. "Caisse des Dépôts was able to make us a financial offer that matched our ambitions. Beyond the financial aspect, she brings us the expertise of her teams who benefit from an excellent understanding of market issues, due to her experience working alongside RIPs" assures Antoine Fournier, General Manager of Kosc.

However, the operation almost failed. Indeed, one of the investment conditions of the Bank of the Territories was the proper technical and legal functioning of Kosc. However, several technical and organizational problems with SFR, when the assets were transferred, took them to court. "Not all the disputes with SFR are behind us, so we don't want to express ourselves any further on the subject. All we can say is that our partners have largely congratulated us on our perseverance during the legal battles of recent months. Just because Kosc is under legal pressure from a powerful player does not mean that Kosc bends" the company says.
 
Despite its disputes with SFR, the network is now operational. The company has around thirty customer operators and has been online since mid-July with more than 2 million eligible catches throughout the country. Even the competition from Bouygues, SFR and Orange on the "bitstream fibre" offers does not worry the operator. "Thanks to the mobilisation of Kosc Telecom teams, there is now a first bitstream fibre offer and your question shows that the market is finally opening up! It is so much better for our operator customers" adds Antoire Fournier. Kosc does not intend to stop there as it now installs itself in "neutral" data centers to open access to its backbone links, its professional fiber collection and enterprise fiber.

Read the article

Source : Nextinpact

A real information tool and Internet Telecommunications reference for the IT actors of the territory, the RezoLink 2017 directory is available in digital version, click here.

The paper edition coming very soon!

→ Download ←

 About RezoLink

This directory identifies our members connected to our IXPs (Operators, DataCenters, ISP, IT services companies, Businesses) as well as our main partners, public actors and associations.

A real information tool and Internet Telecommunications reference for the IT actors of the territory, the updated directory is available here.

Download the PDF version now!

→ Download ←

About RezoLink

This directory identifies our members connected on our IXPs (Operators, DataCenters, ISP, IT services companies, Businesses) as well as our main partners, Public Actors and Associations.