The Court of auditors, hits hard on the Very High-Speed [SHIFT] – ZDNet France

Article updated 17h

If one listens to the government, the coverage of France fiber optic is on the rail. It is enough to be convinced to watch the TV spots aired every day on several channels, demonstrating the value of very high-speed and especially the progress of the deployments. All with beautiful images of technicians drop down to the pipe in the fields…

Yet, according to the latest figures from the regulator, the number of subscriptions to very high speed reached 5 million at September 30, 2016, which represents only 18% of Internet access in France. Recall that according to the definition adopted by the ARCEP and the European Union, the Very High Speed corresponds to a minimum of 30 Mb/s downstream rate. The majority of the growth is to the credit of the FTTH, : his progression is +775.000 in a year to reach 1.9 million subscribers.

the stated objective of The Plan France Very High-Speed is to provide an Internet access at very high speed at all (housing, public administrations and services, businesses) to horizon 2022, and covering the entire national territory. It took nearly 4 years to go from 1.7 million to 5 million subscribers to high speed broadband and reach 18% of the market, can we still expect to convert more than 20 million subscribers in 5 years to reach the goal ?

For the Court of auditors, which has examined the issue, in the state, the answer is “no”. In a report, which is very severe, the institution believes that almost anything will do : the initial budget will be greatly exceeded, as the time-limits of coverage.

“The financial courts evaluate to 34.9 billion euros the total cost of the Plan, originally estimated at $ 20 billion. “The lack of private co-financing for the construction of networks of public initiative (only 1 billion of the 12 billion euros of investments, to $ 3 billion expected), and requires a competition of territorial communities of approximately 6.5 billion until 2022, well above the forecasts. Impasse on funding of 12 billion network of public initiative is to be expected beyond this deadline”, stated the Court of auditors.

in addition, if the coverage objective intermediate (50 % in 2017) will be reached, the failure of the co-investment private compromises the achievement of the goal of 100 % in 2022″, it read. “The financial courts find that the steering of the programme at national level has limitations and that there are obvious gaps in the organization of the construction and operation of infrastructure networks. The procedures for the allocation of State subsidies are complex and heavy, while the teams of the central government are scattered and poorly equipped”, she says. The Court is rather a horizon to 2030.

On the current situation, the Court of auditors considers that “the coverage of its population by very high fixed rate is lower than that found in many european countries, and the disparities of access speeds to the internet are important”.

As the Arcep, the institution is concerned about the delay of the penetration of high speed broadband in the business for lack of offers well sized in relation to the application, and because of the weight of the two dominant players. “Companies need the offerings tailored in terms of comfort of use, speed, symmetrical, secure (failure rate, response time, recovery period, etc) and availability of designated spokespersons. Operators providing businesses access to dedicated fiber-optic provide this type of guarantees. In this market, bids which use the infrastructure of optical fiber Orange have conditions rates are high. In 2012, Orange, through its brand Orange Business Services, was responsible for the coverage of dedicated fiber for 77 % of French companies with 20 or more employees.”

“the Court recommends that The Arcep to seek to enhance competition on the market to companies. It could come from a review of the obligation that would be made to Orange to propose to the alternative operators the offer of access enabled on fibre-optics in the framework of the future analysis of markets”. Here, the Court therefore goes further than the recommendations of the Arcep,…

More generally, the financial courts make 11 recommendations to the government, Arcep and local authorities. “They call, in particular, to complement and refresh, in the light of the results achieved, the objectives of the Plan France very high speed by introducing a minimum threshold of speed ascending and descending, by increasing the use of alternative technologies to the optical fiber to the subscriber, in incorporating a lens of digital penetration in business and converging on the term of the master plans of territorial development-to-digital (2030)”.

The Court invites the State to “strengthen the monitoring of the performance of networks of public initiative in calculating their rate of return on investment ; to strengthen the program by implementing a parangonnage contractual, legal, and financial ; to consolidate and pool at the regional level the functions of high value-added or all of the functions of networks of public initiative ; to explicitly treat the issue of the security and resilience of networks ; to organize the transparency of the commitments of the operators in the area of private initiative and the sanction of non-compliance”.

Article updated at 17 - the Face of this attack as a rule of the Court of auditors, the regulator has not been slow to respond. In reality, it has done it more than a month through a letter sent to the president of the Court of auditors. “Make sure to bring in maturities of close to a minimum flow rate sufficient, in all jurisdictions must not, however, divert the France of the objective of widespread high-speed broadband and the deployment of the infrastructure FttH term, in particular in a european context ambitious,” writes Sébastien Soriano, president of the Authority.

“In this context, the national objectives – have the value of strength training for a public intervention that is de facto decentralized – a 100% coverage in very high-throughput in 2022 with a large portion of FttH networks, should not be revised downwards,” says the manager.

We note, however, that the Arcep and the Court are on the same wave length in regard to fiber to the businesses. If the regulator has not yet discussed the issue of growing access offers activated by Orange, its chairman said :

“The Authority joined the Court’s conclusions regarding the emergence of wholesale offers activated to animate the market company. More generally, the Authority considers that the market for companies is, at present, insufficiently competitive. (…) In order to promote more competition on the wholesale market enabled and thus make it available to multiple operators using these offers a greater diversity of solutions, it seems important that new players can position themselves on the market of wholesale offers enabled on fiber, based on offers passive adequate. The Authority intends to take action in this direction”. Has the good time.