AI-generated visual, Microsoft Designer
Good news, the number of disputes between telecom operators and their subscribers has fallen for the second year in a row. The Electronic Communications Mediation received 7,631 requests for mediation in 2023, a decrease of 15%. From this number of referrals, the organization made 3,178 solution proposals, a figure down 36%.
The parenthesis of the health crisis, at the origin of an increase in conflicts, seems definitively closed. Created twenty years ago at the initiative of telecom operators, Mediation sees in this downward trend “ the result of better customer management » by industry players.
If we zoom in by technology, the share of mobile phones falls by three points to represent 36% of disputes. With the announced closure of the copper network and the transition to optical fiber, conflicts linked to ADSL are mechanically less significant, down two points (19%). Fixed telephony represents very low and constant (2.5%) disputes.
Broken cabinets and wild unplugging
On the other hand, disputes linked to fiber are increasing sharply (+6 points) and are now in first position, ahead of mobile telephony and ADSL. Unsurprisingly, this list reflects the reality on the ground. Even though the pace of deployments has been slowing for almost a year, optical fiber had 20.6 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter of 2023, or more than six in ten internet subscriptions (64%).
But this is not the only reason for the increase in discontent. Technical problems linked to fiber account for 53% of disputes, far ahead of service management (16%), contracts (14%), termination conditions (11%) or problems linked to billing (6%).
Ineligibility for fiber, malfunctions linked to fractured technical cabinets, wild disconnection of consumers by technicians for the benefit of a new customer to be connected… By their nature, the problems encountered by fiber castaways are similar from one year to the next. the other.
In the examples of requests received by Mediation, we find the case of a technician who, when connecting the fiber to the home of an occupant of a nursing home, cuts, by mistake, the emergency call line of this residence. If the operator does not dispute the damage, its service provider refuses to cover the estimate which it considers too high.
Gruesome situations
Mrs. M. complains about the interruption of her fiber subscription which results from the disconnection of her line by a service provider of an operator other than hers to connect a new customer. In the meantime, its operator plans to restore its ADSL line but it was cut during the installation of the fiber!
As a result, the supplier terminated Mrs. M.’s fiber contract and is no longer able to offer her another one as long as the infrastructure operator, in charge of deploying the fiber network, does not offer new lines. . A grotesque situation…
Mediator of electronic communications, Valérie Alvarez notes, moreover, that “ the construction of the first fiber networks was not necessarily carried out according to today’s state of the art and they require a takeover by infrastructure operators to ensure maintenance. » On the mobile side, she fears, moreover, that “The shutdown of 2G and 3G mobile networks in the coming years risks being the source of new problems for consumers. »
The mediator also sees the emergence of a form of ambiguity relating to the financial responsibility for certain civil engineering works to carry out fiber connections which, although carried out in the public domain, are billed to consumers by commercial operators. This cost must, of course, be borne by the infrastructure operator.