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France has 90% FTTH coverage in 2025, with 60% of households over 1 Gbps. One of the incumbents, Free (my employer), deployed P2P fibers in very dense areas but

by vbernat 6mo ago

France has 90% FTTH coverage in 2025, with 60% of households over 1 Gbps. One of the incumbents, Free (my employer), deployed P2P fibers in very dense areas but is switching to P2MP for economic reasons (and because this was not a competitive advantage). It's unclear to me if Switzerland plans to achieve this coverage with P2P. What looks great in Switzerland is not that each household has four dedicated fibers to the CO, but that Swisscom has responsibility for these fibers. In France, we have competition between operators for both services and infrastructure. In very dense areas, each building can have its own infrastructure operator (with an obligation to share); in less dense areas, this is by district (with an obligation to share); and in rural areas, this is a subsidized network (with an obligation to share). The downside is that there are "mutualisation points" where each ISP can go to plug or unplug subscribers, and they become a mess (https://img.lemde.fr/2020/06/04/300/0/900/600/1440/960/60/0/2005399_BSRUJTqyG5Uu__r6rHTrzVSF.jpg https://img.lemde.fr/2020/06/04/300/0/900/600/1440/960/60/0/...). BTW, I am also disturbed by AI-generated images. The ones with the three workers laying cables look highly unrealistic and made me pause for a couple of minutes, wondering if they lay cables that way in Germany. The ones about how households are connected to CO look like you get multiple 720-fiber cables to the same household.

jdeibele 6mo ago
I took the image to be showing how inefficient it was to run that much fiber three times instead of just once. It’s unlikely that they’d do it at the same time but it seems very difficult to show buried fiber and a backhoe ripping up the street.
- vbernat 6mo ago
  In reality, this does not happen that way. If a path already exists, you can pay to use the same duct (unless it's full) to install your own fibers. At least, it works this way in France.
  - lachiflippi 6mo ago
    It absolutely does happen that way in Germany. We had Fiber Company A rip up the entire city a year ago, and Fiber Company B ripped up the streets again just a few weeks ago. ETA from my ISP to actually get any of those lines into my apartment is still 2028.
    - benjiro3000 6mo ago
      [dead]
    - throw0101d 6mo ago
      This is a coördination problem: the municipality can mandate that every company has to install a larger conduit so that (say) 3-6 (?) other fibres can be run. So if one company is doing the east part of the town, and another company is doing the west, at some point they could leverage the infrastructure of each other.
      - eqvinox 6mo ago
        > […] the municipality can mandate […] I don't think so. German open access law says if you're in a "market dominating" position, you have to share access to what you have. I'm at least unaware of a law that allows forcing telcos to build more than they want. (And even if there were, it'd be balanced by them deciding to just not build at all.)
  - dtech 6mo ago
    I'm glad it works that way there. In the Netherlands, I've never seen a fiber duct laid in residential areas, it seems just plain fiber cables are buried. Worse, two companies are chasing each other, so you have the ground being opened, closed, and within half a year the other company does the same. Even worse, they let the fiber cables stick out of the ground until the house subscribes to them, so a lot of houses have 1 or 2 ugly orange cables sticking out of the ground for years near the front door.
    - m_mueller 6mo ago
      at least in the Netherlands you got these nice street bricks, so it's not always a waste of concrete and patched streets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1kV6V_jvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1kV6V_jvI
  - cnd78A 6mo ago
    Which companies usually create these ducts? Is it a business to install ducts and sell (rent?) the right to use it?
madaxe_again 6mo ago
I’m curious as to how those numbers skew rural vs urban, as my experience in France couldn’t be further from fibre - have had a house there for decades, and we went straight from dialup to starlink, as there still isn’t even DSL available there. Fibre… don’t make me laugh. It’s not like we’re super rural, either - small village, about 8km from two middling towns. The cell network isn’t much better - it’s 5g in the towns, and 2G or nothing as soon as you’re a few km out of them. There is a fibre trunk running down the main road, 1.5km from the village, but when we enquired France telecom quoted about €250,000 to extend the fibre up to us. We passed. Edit: same kinda deal with free.fr. If I check availability by address, it fails, as while the commune exists, the village does not, never mind the roads within it. If I enter the land line number, it says it is a mobile number and refuses to proceed. So: your figures say 90%, but I suspect that’s a theoretical number rather than a real one. Maybe it’s 90% of the 60% of addresses which got included in the statistics. Edit edit: Ah hah, yes. I’ve looked at arcep’s methodology. That 90% is inventoried premises (homes & businesses) which: - could be connected to FTTH, theoretically. - exist in the arcep database - are within several km of a live fibre My home would be counted as “connected” by their methodology, even though there’s a quarter million euro bill to pay to make it so, and several km of fibre to run. So - the stat is self-aggrandising bullshit, sorry.
- vbernat 6mo ago
  Did you check on https://cartefibre.arcep.fr/ https://cartefibre.arcep.fr/? If your address is there, you will know the status of your address and notably the infrastructure operator, which has the obligation to cover your zone before 2030. If your address is not there (and the zone is empty, otherwise, this is up to your municipality to fix the missing address), it means there is no infrastructure operator yet. This is up to your local government to make a deal with an infrastructure operator to cover this zone. As for the numbers, as it is open data, there are some sites like https://infofibre.fr/ https://infofibre.fr/ where this is easier to see where we are. You can see that even rural regions have more than 90% of household coverage. As for definitions, there are two cases for availability: immediate availability (infrastructure operator present up and you have at least one commercial operator after 3 months) or delayed availibility (the infrastructure operator has 6 months to make the address available after being asked by a commercial operator).
nunez 6mo ago
Zoom in to see the real terror. Exited the article after seeing that.
port11 6mo ago
Belgium more closely follows the Swiss model — though with some duplication if you consider whatever Orange/Telenet is doing. And you know, fiber isn’t that well distributed. Portugal is also not that different from the Swiss model. Fiber penetration is amazing, even in some rural communities like my grandmother‘s. Could the Swiss secret be small-country-with-good-funding? Could this article be offering only one of the ways in which utilities can become good?

by vbernat 6mo ago

jdeibele 6mo ago

I took the image to be showing how inefficient it was to run that much fiber three times instead of just once. It’s unlikely that they’d do it at the same time but it seems very difficult to show buried fiber and a backhoe ripping up the street.

vbernat 6mo ago
In reality, this does not happen that way. If a path already exists, you can pay to use the same duct (unless it's full) to install your own fibers. At least, it works this way in France.
- lachiflippi 6mo ago
  It absolutely does happen that way in Germany. We had Fiber Company A rip up the entire city a year ago, and Fiber Company B ripped up the streets again just a few weeks ago. ETA from my ISP to actually get any of those lines into my apartment is still 2028.
  - benjiro3000 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - throw0101d 6mo ago
    This is a coördination problem: the municipality can mandate that every company has to install a larger conduit so that (say) 3-6 (?) other fibres can be run. So if one company is doing the east part of the town, and another company is doing the west, at some point they could leverage the infrastructure of each other.
    - eqvinox 6mo ago
      > […] the municipality can mandate […] I don't think so. German open access law says if you're in a "market dominating" position, you have to share access to what you have. I'm at least unaware of a law that allows forcing telcos to build more than they want. (And even if there were, it'd be balanced by them deciding to just not build at all.)
- dtech 6mo ago
  I'm glad it works that way there. In the Netherlands, I've never seen a fiber duct laid in residential areas, it seems just plain fiber cables are buried. Worse, two companies are chasing each other, so you have the ground being opened, closed, and within half a year the other company does the same. Even worse, they let the fiber cables stick out of the ground until the house subscribes to them, so a lot of houses have 1 or 2 ugly orange cables sticking out of the ground for years near the front door.
  - m_mueller 6mo ago
    at least in the Netherlands you got these nice street bricks, so it's not always a waste of concrete and patched streets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1kV6V_jvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1kV6V_jvI
- cnd78A 6mo ago
  Which companies usually create these ducts? Is it a business to install ducts and sell (rent?) the right to use it?

madaxe_again 6mo ago

I’m curious as to how those numbers skew rural vs urban, as my experience in France couldn’t be further from fibre - have had a house there for decades, and we went straight from dialup to starlink, as there still isn’t even DSL available there. Fibre… don’t make me laugh. It’s not like we’re super rural, either - small village, about 8km from two middling towns. The cell network isn’t much better - it’s 5g in the towns, and 2G or nothing as soon as you’re a few km out of them. There is a fibre trunk running down the main road, 1.5km from the village, but when we enquired France telecom quoted about €250,000 to extend the fibre up to us. We passed. Edit: same kinda deal with free.fr. If I check availability by address, it fails, as while the commune exists, the village does not, never mind the roads within it. If I enter the land line number, it says it is a mobile number and refuses to proceed. So: your figures say 90%, but I suspect that’s a theoretical number rather than a real one. Maybe it’s 90% of the 60% of addresses which got included in the statistics. Edit edit: Ah hah, yes. I’ve looked at arcep’s methodology. That 90% is inventoried premises (homes & businesses) which: - could be connected to FTTH, theoretically. - exist in the arcep database - are within several km of a live fibre My home would be counted as “connected” by their methodology, even though there’s a quarter million euro bill to pay to make it so, and several km of fibre to run. So - the stat is self-aggrandising bullshit, sorry.

vbernat 6mo ago
Did you check on https://cartefibre.arcep.fr/ https://cartefibre.arcep.fr/? If your address is there, you will know the status of your address and notably the infrastructure operator, which has the obligation to cover your zone before 2030. If your address is not there (and the zone is empty, otherwise, this is up to your municipality to fix the missing address), it means there is no infrastructure operator yet. This is up to your local government to make a deal with an infrastructure operator to cover this zone. As for the numbers, as it is open data, there are some sites like https://infofibre.fr/ https://infofibre.fr/ where this is easier to see where we are. You can see that even rural regions have more than 90% of household coverage. As for definitions, there are two cases for availability: immediate availability (infrastructure operator present up and you have at least one commercial operator after 3 months) or delayed availibility (the infrastructure operator has 6 months to make the address available after being asked by a commercial operator).

nunez 6mo ago

Zoom in to see the real terror. Exited the article after seeing that.

port11 6mo ago

Belgium more closely follows the Swiss model — though with some duplication if you consider whatever Orange/Telenet is doing. And you know, fiber isn’t that well distributed. Portugal is also not that different from the Swiss model. Fiber penetration is amazing, even in some rural communities like my grandmother‘s. Could the Swiss secret be small-country-with-good-funding? Could this article be offering only one of the ways in which utilities can become good?