Protected by tarpaulin barriers, the four Orange technicians busy in a street in Gennevilliers (Hauts-de-Seine) pay little attention to the storm Ciaran which, on the morning of November 2, is sweeping Ile-de-France. Despite its strength, there is no risk of the wind carrying away the cable that they extract from the sidewalk: made up of 896 pairs of copper, which gives it a diameter of approximately ten centimeters, this 1.7 kilometer long telephone hose weighs several tons. Raised to the surface by an electric pulley, then cut into 1.5 meter pieces, which will take around a week of work, the cable will end up in a recycling center, where its valuable components (copper, lead, etc.) will be recycled.
This kind of scene will multiply on the sidewalks. For Orange, according to a plan announced on February 7, 2022, it is a question of dismantling, by 2030, the copper network inherited from its ancestor France Télécom. Too expensive to maintain – around 500 million euros per year –, difficult to interconnect with recent technologies and sensitive to humidity, this spider web is outmoded by optical fiber: faster, the latter has become the majority in homes to access the Internet or watch television. As of June 30, according to the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Press Distribution (Arcep), France had 19.8 million fiber subscribers, compared to 8.5 million for copper ( ADSL).
Finally, even if the copper network has the advantage of operating without electricity, unlike fiber, it would only be of limited assistance in the event of a massive power outage, such as during the Ciaran and Domingos storms: the number subscribers to a copper telephone line continues to decline (4.9 million in 2022 compared to 9.2 million in 2018); and, unless you take the old rotary telephone out of the attic, today’s fixed devices need electricity to operate.
Fear of competitors
Thus, after experiments in seven municipalities, the end of copper project is accelerating: 162 cities will cut the wire by December 31, 2025. This will be followed by 829 municipalities, at the end of 2026. The rest of France will last until 2030.
“The second phase of experimentation has just ended and we can say that it is a success”welcomed Patrick Squizzato, the director of Orange networks in Ile-de-France, on November 7, during a conference of the Association of Cities and Communities for Electronic Communications and Audiovisual (Avicca) . “The experiments went surprisingly well”had fun, alongside him, Laurent Laganier, the regulatory director of Free, the operator of Xavier Niel (individual shareholder of World). “Surprisingly”he knowingly used, because everyone says that stopping copper is a breeding ground for problems.
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