On October 8th, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered SFR to send a letter to certain subscribers informing them that they can unilaterally terminate their fixed Internet access contract. Capital tells us that if the operator resists, it will have to pay 500,000 euros for each day of delay.

This legal procedure was initiated in January 2018 by its competitor Free. Indeed, although a decree has regulated the use of the word fibre since 2016, SFR has continued to maintain a certain vagueness in its commercial offers.

It is also accused of using the term FttB (Fiber to the Building) since, in some cases, its fiber does not go all the way down to the bottom of the building but only into a street cabinet.

Today SFR claims to have 3.1 million end-to-end fibre optic customers (FttH) and 13.8 million lines eligible for Very High Speed broadband.

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Source : 01net

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.

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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.

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Source : 01net