This should ultimately allow the incumbent operator to save 500 million euros per year on the maintenance of ADSL lines.
The copper network has lived. Orange has just submitted to ARCEP its plan to cut off access, an operation that should occupy the operator for the current decade.
Another Crucial Step to Drive Fiber Optic Adoption
Today 32 million French households are eligible for fiber optics and 13 million of them already have a compatible subscription with one of the fixed operators. This shutdown of the copper network aims to give a new boost to this technology.
The shutdown of the copper network will be done gradually to allow time for the very many current users of ADSL technology to turn around and switch to a fiber offer. In the meantime, ADSL offers will no longer be marketed before the final technical shutdown.
This eight-year period should allow the last areas still little or not covered by fiber to be connected to the very high speed network. As a reminder, the government has set itself the objective of fibering the entire territory by 2025.
A forced march that raises many questions
While the shutdown of copper can be explained by the desire to abandon this technology, which is currently limited in terms of connection quality and speeds, it should also allow the incumbent operator, who owns and manages the network, to make very comfortable savings.
Orange estimates that the maintenance of more than one million kilometers of cables throughout the country costs 500 million euros per year. ” Paying for two networks is economic heresy “, says Michael Combot, Managing Director of the French Telecoms Federation to our colleagues from World.
The operator will also save energy, the fiber network costing about three times as much as the good old ADSL network, plus profits on the sale of copper recovered during the dismantling of lines and equipment.
However, the operation poses several problems. Operators, led by Orange, will have to convince reluctant owners when a fiber box arrives in their homes.
The subject of universal service, which allows the most remote subscribers to benefit from a telephone line, also arises. Orange will provide it until the end of 2023, but then nothing is written to allow people, often elderly or in a precarious situation, to continue to benefit from a means of communication at a reduced rate after this deadline.
There is also the question of the cost of dismantling the copper network. ARCEP has put forward the idea of an increase in the unbundling price, which allows operators competing with Orange to use the network for their subscriptions, but they categorically refuse to put their hands in the pot to pay for the work. .
On the same subject :
Connecting rural areas to fiber optics: the government wants to accelerate the movement
Source: The world
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