According to the Financial Times, Orange is preparing to split its mobile tower business, the pylons where 3G/4G equipment for mobile phone use is installed, into a separate entity. This could be a prelude to a partial or total sale later on. A new entity that can be valued between €8 and €10.3 billion. Stéphane Richard's group has the largest number of antennas in France (15,000 in total), and one of the largest in Europe (59,000 antennas on the Old Continent, in Africa and in the Middle East).

Orange will inform about its projects during its investor day scheduled for December 4, according to sources in the Financial Times. Its CEO stated last May that "the current appetite for infrastructure funds clearly reveals the intrinsic value of telecom networks". The French operator must ask itself the question of "maximizing the value" of its infrastructure, he said at the time.

This type of split and sale is a cash movement of telecom operators in search of cash. Last August, Free sold 70% of Iliad Tower Co. In 2018, SFR (Altice) partially sold SFR TowerCo while Bouygues Telecom initiated the movement in 2016 with two disposals for a total amount of 700 million euros.

 Read the article

Source : BFM Business

The telecoms police officer has just sent an early formal notice to Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad-Free regarding the "New Mobile Deal". Indeed, Arcep considers that the commitments made by operators under this agreement, dating from January 2018, are not progressing fast enough.

At the time, the State agreed to renew part of the frequencies granted to operators for ten years and free of charge. A "gift" with a counterpart, however: the operators had undertaken to cover the territory more, particularly in the famous "white areas".

By the end of 2020, they must have converted all their existing 2G and 3G sites to 4G and improve mobile coverage on transport routes (from 2018) and inside buildings (from 2019).

But a year and a half after the signing, the regulator would find that progress was insufficient. "The regulator has no confidence in the operators, he believes that this case is dragging on," explains a source familiar with the case.

If the targets were not met by the 2020 deadline, early warning would make it possible to initiate sanctions more quickly without wasting time.

Aware that operators have always had difficulty meeting their commitments, the government has organised progress reports on the progress of the work. This was obviously not enough.

However, in June 2018, the government published the first 485 sites on which operators had to install their 4G antennas. For its part, the Arcep had launched its quarterly dashboard. But several observers had already warned of the magnitude of the task. "The deadlines were super-short. We could legitimately be concerned," recalls one participant today.

Operators, on the other hand, deny any delay. "Operators are deploying on schedule. ...] We are on the ground every day to solve administrative and technical challenges with the support of communities and government services. Arcep is welcome in the territories and will thus become even more aware of the collective success underway to finally solve the problem of white areas," said Arthur Dreyfuss, President of the French Telecommunications Federation. Summer is therefore likely to be turbulent.

 Read the article

Source : Les Echos

The AOTA - Association of Alternative Telecommunications Operators - has just referred the matter to the Arcep to request the opening of Orange's fibre network. Indeed, the 47 members of the association complain that they do not have sufficient access to it and accuse the incumbent of anti-competitive practices.

Since they cannot build very expensive networks themselves covering the entire country, small operators must first "borrow" Orange and SFR networks. They therefore rent access to the two dominant players in the corporate telecom market and buy voice or data from them at wholesale prices. They then sell them to their own customers.

But here we are, alternative operators feel ousted from the market of companies that have not been able to "connect" enough to the Orange network. With 12.4 million outlets, the incumbent's fibre network is both very large and very capillary. Hanging on to it therefore makes it possible to target SMEs with connectivity needs on several sites or plants spread over the territory. It is precisely these customers who escape the more geographically limited members of the AOTA.

A long-standing problem linked to the lack of fibre regulation for professionals. Indeed, Orange is obliged to offer wholesale offers to small operators wishing to access the copper network (ADSL) but not on fibre. In 2017, Alternative Télécom had already demanded more openness.

However, it is impossible for Orange to open up to competition a network built with billions of investments. Small operators believe that the operator has been favoured by its historical footprint on cable, which it was able to convert very quickly to fibre. Today, Orange controls approximately 70% of the corporate fibre market.

For its part, the French Competition Authority has chosen to regulate this market by creating a third player, Kosc, to "break" the predominance of Orange-SFR. This "wholesale" operator deploys its own fibre network, which it then rents to small AOTA or Alternative Télécom operators. "Kosc is a good complement, but it's one of many solutions. And anyway, the Kosc network does not have the same capillarity as Orange," explains one of these small operators. The ball is now in the Arcep's court.

 Read the article

Source : Les Echos

After a first meeting on January 29th, the second is planned for July 2th at Challes-les-Eaux.

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.

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

Registrations:

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

Practical informations:

See you on July 2nd at 9:00 am at Hub des Alpes (salle Altitude 193) - 37 avenue des Massettes, 73190 Challes-les-Eaux.

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

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

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