Laure de la Raudière had made quality of service on fiber networks her priority when she was appointed head of Arcep on January 28, 2021. Some two years later, the president of the regulatory authority for the telecoms sector gave an assessment of his action during his hearing at the Senate’s Economic Affairs Committee.
While fiber is being deployed at a sustained pace throughout the territory, contributing to the success of the France Very High Speed Plan, the telecoms policeman has received a large number of complaints from citizens and local elected officials faced with malfunctions in the field. For their attention, Arcep has set up an online alert system.
Connection difficulties, temporary disconnections, users disconnected for the benefit of a new subscriber, deterioration of street cabinets… the multiplication of incidents is poisoning the lives of subscribers in certain localities.
“In 2021, the operators had still not put in place the control processes, nor the tools making it possible to trace the interventions carried out on the networks and to identify those responsible for faulty workmanship and damage to the networks, recalls Laure de la Raudière. They were also in a certain denial of the importance of the subject.”
Thanks to data on quality of service collected since April 2021, Arcep has identified that certain networks concentrate incidents. About 2% of the fiber optic lines, mostly located in Ile de France, have a failure rate much higher than the average.
Action plans to strengthen the quality of the networks
The operators concerned have notified Arcep of their action plans aimed at rectifying the situation. At the end of September, Altitude Infra undertook to restore, by March, 70 concentration points, i.e. 33,000 premises, in Essonne and Calvados, in particular on the old Covage and Tutor networks taken over in October 2021.
In October, XpFibre also presented a recovery plan for some of its most degraded networks. XpFibre plans to refurbish 900 pooling points mainly in Ile-de-France and in the Rhône, i.e. 400,000 premises, by the end of 2024.
During her hearing in the Senate, Laure de la Raudière pointed out that Free also very recently – on January 24 – notified Arcep of a takeover plan. It would concern the operator’s fiber networks in the Paris region, in particular in Sarcelles, but would concern fewer lines than the two previous cases.
While the telecom sector submitted an action plan to improve the quality of fiber networks last September, Arcep says it is vigilant about its execution by ensuring monthly monitoring. The Authority intends to control the operations carried out in the field and ensure that the agents intervening with customers or on the networks are well qualified and trained.
In the eyes of Laure de la Raudière, this issue of quality of service seems all the more important in the perspective of the closure of the copper network by Orange. “We must be able to count on a well-built and well-operated fiber network to enable and succeed in replacing the copper network with this new infrastructure.” CQFD