The war between Orange and Arcep, the telecoms policeman, is not about to drop in intensity. The Avicca put a coin back in the pinball machine. The association which brings together communities involved in digital has published two vitriolic notes on its site It demonstrates, with supporting figures, the slowdown in the deployment of fiber in medium-sized towns and large cities.
AMII zones: 11% of municipalities completely covered
The main grievance relates to moderately dense areas, known as “AMII” for “call for demonstration of investment intention”. While their coverage should have been completed at the end of 2022, as Orange and SFR had committed to, it would be effective for only 11% of the 3,315 municipalities concerned (graph below).
Of these 377 fully fibered municipalities, “52% of them come under SFR which, however, only has 17% of the municipalities in the AMII zone to make fully connectable”, notes Avicca. Conversely, 38 municipalities still have no fiber connection, and 100% of them come under Orange. The situation is not ready to improve for the households concerned, estimate the association. At the current rate of deployment, the AMII zones will not be fully covered in 2030, the year of the closure of the copper network carrying the ADSL technologies.
Strong rebound in AMEL zone
On the other hand, deployments in the AMEL zone were in line with the forecasts of the very high-speed observatory, “thanks to a strong rebound in deployments at the end of the year”. As a reminder, the Calls for demonstration of local commitments (AMEL) allow local authorities to launch calls for tenders for operators in order to support the deployment of fiber in municipalities excluded from the AMII.
If Avicca welcomes the results of the excellent last quarter of 2022, partly obtained under pressure from Arcep, they are not enough to make up for the delays of previous years. Another growing concern is the quality of service of the deployments carried out.
This observation should not overshadow local successes. The private initiative zone of Essonne joins the very exclusive club of departments with more than 95% of connectable fiber optic coverage, after Oise, Paris, Yonne and Val-d’Oise. Corrèze and Eure could make their entrance by the summer of 2023.
The private initiative areas of Guyana (+18% over the last quarter), Nièvre (+15%), Lot and Savoie (+10%) also posted particularly sustained growth, knowing that the coverage of the latter department remains below 50%.
On site for high density areas
On the other hand, the deployment in very dense areas (ZTD) is on the spot with the notable exception of Marne-la-Coquette (+ 11%) and Cachan (+ 8%), in the Hauts-de-Seine. The Avicca gives, this time, a satisfaction to the incumbent operator. “Orange is still the only operator to invest other than anecdotally in this very dense area. to deploy the fiber there.”
As a result, with the exception of the two municipalities mentioned above, the deployment in the ZTDs is not progressing and no city has reached a level of completeness close to 100% (see graph below). Worse, 14 municipalities are seeing their coverage rate decrease, ie more new housing is being built there than new optical sockets.
In Ile-de-France, the decline is described as “slight” in Fontenay-aux-Roses, Suresnes, Sceaux, Puteaux, Rueil-Malmaison, Saint-Cloud, Champs-sur-Marne and Bois-Colombes (- 1%) , and more accentuated in Plessis-Robinson (- 2%) and, above all, in Meylan, Châtenay-Malabry, Noisy-le-Sec, Malakoff and Bobigny (- 3%).
The association notes that Colombes is among the list of municipalities concerned by the closure of the copper network while “the progress of completeness is at a standstill”. More generally, she considers “totally illusory if only to consider closing the copper network and therefore ADSL – except on an experimental basis – in the smallest municipality located in a very dense area.”
