Optical fiber: the service providers who subcontract the deployment go on strike


Alexandre boero

December 30, 2021 at 1:30 p.m.

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fiber

The subcontractors who ensure the deployment of optical fiber on behalf of the operators are attracted to the wrath of their service providers, who carry out blockades.

For thousands of employees working to deploy optical fiber in France, the pill of the transition to the new year may be difficult to swallow. The service providers of Sogetrel, a historical subcontractor company of Free and Bouygues Telecom, learned, between Christmas and New Year’s Day, that the subcontracting contracts had been negotiated downwards, even though the providers are struggling to end the months in the green. The latter, who work in the shadow of the general public, have decided to go on strike.

Service providers who come to have expenses greater than their income, losing profitability

It is the YouTube channel “Les Fibreux”, run by specialists in optical fiber, which alerts on this dark side of the immense machine of telecoms and the deployment of networks. Because if France can boast of being one of the European champions in the deployment of optical fiber, with some 6 million new premises made available and eligible for FttH between October 2020 and September 2021, the picture is far from being pink. Behind the scenes, the relationships between telecom operators, subcontractors and their service providers (who “co-treat”, therefore, with subcontractors) are far from idyllic, as we learn in the collective’s video Fibrous.

Sogetrel has informed its service providers of tariff changes in recent days, with entry into force from 1er January 2022. And the renegotiation of lower prices will inevitably put providers a little more in difficulty.

One of them, who employs about fifteen people, even explains working while losing money and considers, even if he refuses to do so out of respect for his employees, that it would be easier to dismiss them. He explains, for example, that one of his teams achieved, a few days ago, a turnover of 203.5 euros, even though its cost price is 350 euros per day worked. This represents, for the employer, a loss of 150 euros per day, for a single team. And to this, the leader, who has decided to join the blockade organized in France, must add ” the price of the maintenance of the truck, the VGP (a legal verification of the state of conservation of work equipment), depreciation of equipment, consumables, telephone subscriptions, authorizations, medical visits, PPE and all contingencies “.

Subcontractors who are criticized for timing in the downward renegotiation of the contract that binds them to subcontractors

To justify the situation, the subcontractor Sogetrel explains that the operators will lower the prices paid, and that it has no other choice than to pass this reduction on to the final connection, and therefore to its co-workers. contractors, who in addition to the drop in prices, complain of unjustified penalties imposed increasing year after year. But providers do not find this logical. According to them, everything was decided too quickly, and it seems unlikely that the operators warned subcontractors at the last minute of a drop in the contract between them.

Blockades have therefore been created at the national level in order to denounce and contest this sudden renegotiation, and lowering, of tariffs. The service providers put forward a number of demands, such as the renegotiation of BPU prices (unit price schedules) and the reimbursement of applied and unjustified penalties, as well as withholdings on attachment, which they also consider ” systematic and unjustified “. They are therefore asking for improved exchanges between Sogetrel and its subcontractors, so as to avoid any conflicting relationship and unpleasant surprises, such as the one experienced in recent days, which is moreover during the end of the year celebrations. ” We will go to the end “, Already warn providers.

At the beginning of December, the sector had already sneezed after the revelations of Scopelec, a subcontractor comparable to Sogetrel, but which works for its part with Orange. The incumbent would indeed have threatened not to renew the contract with the company (which costs it 150 million euros each year), which employs 1,900 people, since it launches a call for tenders which does not guarantee that the company Scopelec will recover two of the three lots that it currently holds. Scopelec employees could nevertheless be rehired by a company which would then recover the market.


On the same subject :
Connecting rural areas to optical fiber: the government wants to accelerate the movement



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