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France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country

152 points by EwanToo 14y ago

vacri 14y ago
Hopefully the French public respond more maturely than the Australian public did to their similar plan - after years of bitching about how shit internet speeds were here, the gummint finally said "okay, we're going to build a great network with capacity for future use; it will be a great nation-building project", to which the public promptly turned on its heel and started whining about what a white elephant it was and how we have enough capacity and don't need the benefits...
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  You and I both know that the politics, economics and public finance implications of the NBN are far more complex than you're making them out to be. (We've crossed swords on the subject before)
  - vacri 14y ago
    My comment is meant to be more lighthearted than serious political analysis, not to mention that we both also know that the general public have short memories and the tone is set by whomever is bitching at the moment. I certainly don't agree that the general public is aware of the complexities - vocal opponents of party X usually take any excuse that's currently going and run with it.
- jvrossb 14y ago
  Are you sure it's the same public? You're making it sound like the same people who were once for it swung against it.
  - cpleppert 14y ago
    If he is referring to poll numbers likely he is taking them out of context and extrapolating tepid support for one element to majority support for the entire project. This happens a lot in the media analysis of polls. You can't take what the results of a poll question were and assume that 100% of the respondents in favor even: 1)know what the project is 2)favor it over alternatives 3)have judged the the disadvantages and are prepared for them 4)support it because they believe their party supports it 5)have faith in the political system This isn't about the wording per se. Context matters. To take a recent example: polls shows that Americans favor Obama over congressional republicans on economic issues. However, they still are (generally and marginally)opposed to his handling of economic issues and a strong minority of those who oppose the republicans do so out of a belief that they aren't cutting government enough. In other words, disillusioned republicans don't favor either party but aren't likely to support obama under any circumstances. You can look at the same polls with regard to china and democracy. Chinese both are satisfied with the direction of their country and want more democracy. If you aren't willing to consider context you can choose either poll to support your position.
  - vacri 14y ago
    I'm talking more about the general public tone, but yes, I do know some people that made that exact switch. There's really not much cognitive dissonance involved. It reminds me of a friend of mine who grew up around poor people and was aware of how they struggle with money. Her family wasn't in poverty, but they weren't flush with money either. At around age 30, she made her way into the finance industry and started pulling down six figures. She mentioned that she got a raise recently, but had been infected by the finance mindset that any raise is tainted by the marginal tax rate, and was bitching that 'half of it went to the government' (for values where .37 = half, it seems). Anyway, her version of the story went 'the government taxes so much money out that I can't give as much to my single-mother sister who is scraping by on welfare - they should lower taxes [for this reason]'. I asked what about all the other single mothers our there that don't have sisters in high finance - reducing the tax yield would mean they get less. My friend changed her tune pretty fast and realised that hey, she was actually in a good position and should be positive about it instead of negative. The thing is, my friend wasn't someone who grew up amongst wealth, she knew what it was like to be poor, and she herself had worked the same shitty jobs as poor people everywhere. She was smart, and knew deeply about social opportunity (she dated a fiery, forthright anarchist for many years). People just tend to have short memories and short forethought and tend to think that what concerns them in the present is the most important thing always.
OGinparadise 14y ago
It's about $3 Billion a year. Not bad at all. US could have done this and fixed the power grid when we had that $800 Billion stimulus plan, at least we would have gotten something worthy out of it.
doe88 14y ago
It's about time to massively rollout FTTH in France. Paradoxically I think its deployment has been hampered by a good early ADSL coverage and the associated low prices on ADSL (with uncapped data). These low prices have decided the operators to only make minimum investments on their networks and to further seek to make profit in mobile where data plans are capped and where profits are better. Moreover the entry of a new actor in the mobile space last year has further exacerbated the situation, this actor has significantly reduced the subscriptions prices so the others actors seek to differentiate themselves and one way they found is to invest in LTE networks. So for all these reasons until now FTTH had low priority in France and is marginal. I hope it will change soon.
- Jacqued 14y ago
  Don't forget FTTLA, which is vastly available in the most densely populated urban areas - it is not as fast as FTTH when there are a lot of households connected to the last amplifier, but i'd say roughly 20% of households could have access to it. On the other hand, FFTH is available for maybe 0.5% of the country (I mean, even in Paris itself, not one building in twenty is connected to it...) I think you are right with your argument on cheap and good quality ADSL services : i think for most people an uncapped 10-20Mbps, that includes TV, phone, and our famous boxes for 30€ a month is more than enough...
  - bambax 14y ago
    I only pay 32€ every other month, and I have more bandwidth than I need.
    - 18pfsmt 14y ago
      Could you imagine using your own hardware, on your own connection to run your bootstrapped side-project for $100/mo? I'd rather not have to pay Amazon, OVH, or whoever just to be able to service side-projects.
sambeau 14y ago
Britain would be better-off doing this rather than building ahigh-speed line. High speed internet for the whole country would be a massive stimulus to all sorts of new business ideas and working practices.
- alan_cx 14y ago
  Could be argued that if done properly and thoroughly, the rail line might not be necessary at all.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Eh, people doing internet things overestimate how game-changing fast internet is. I don't care how fast the internet is, people are still going to want to meet each other for dinner, see grand-babies in person, etc. Faster internet doesn't obviate the need for travel.
    - Retric 14y ago
      Cut even 1 trip in 50 and you can avoid building a lot of infrastructure. Netflix vs video rentals is one clear example of less trips, but there are plenty of others.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        1) Cutting 1 trip in 50 is actually a lot; 2) A 2% reduction in travel doesn't do much when e.g. U.S. air traffic alone is growing 2-3% every year and car traffic is increasing at 2-4% each year.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        Retric 14y ago
        Air travel is substituting for other forms of travel because it has become far cheaper with a 50% average cost savings between 1997 and 2006.
mtgx 14y ago
Only 50 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload? I guess it would be okay for rural areas, but it's awfully obsolete for cities, even today, let alone for 2023 - at least for an European country, especially one like France. And why such low upload speeds?
- Jacqued 14y ago
  Today in France, most people in cities can have access to 100Mbps/5Mbps. Low upload speeds have been a constant around here since the first broadband offering, with upload speeds capping at roughly one tenth or on twentielth of download speeds. I guess this is because the concept of Internet as an entirely decentralized network didn't make sense to France Telecom, the national operator which made the first investments. Why ? Because before Internet, France had the minitel, and entirely centralized network. And so as a pure client, you don't really need that much upload speed. Also, some argued that low upload speeds were maintained to harm illegal P2P file sharing. Nonetheless, we are seeing some symmetrical offers appear. Most notably, Orange (former France Telecom and France leading operator) is offering a 100/100Mbps connection for 45€/mo, whereas the 100/5 one costs 35€/mo.
  - kl0nk 14y ago
    To give the entire picture, you should say that ADSL is asynchronous, and the 100/5 Mbps (and also 200Mbps/10 which I currently have, but only available in Paris) are offers offers are from "Numericable, which is a cable operator (and the only one) were/are really famous for their... err. problems (euphemism). In my last flat I was eligible to offers from "Free" ISP , and I got around 500Mbps to 800Mbps symectrical bandwith since it was only limited by the gigabit switch of the box. Sadly I had to move. And to be totally honest their peering problem (again euphemism since Youtube was slower than my smartphone with Orange in 3G) was killing the thrill. I got a faster "everyday" internet right now with 200/10/Mbps than during my "Free" days. (For the story Numericable has abandoned the peering part of the job and just buy bandwith to Level3, Neotelecoms, Telia and HE mainly. Their only job is to deploy and maintain a country wide backbone). During the 2000s France internet was really in advance, with the cheapest megabytes, but right now it tends to be like others countries :( The only good thing that remains is that traffic is always unlimited, in homes offers. The business market is still competitive. My point is I don't think €20B is really an answer, but that's not answering to how they are going to use it.
bjhoops1 14y ago
If you'd like to know more about why the U.S. lags insanely far behind in the broadband race, and why we pay ~ 4 times as much for our inferior service, check out David Cay Johnston's The Fine Print. I don't recommend it for anyone with blood pressure issues.
wtvanhest 14y ago
Is there anyone else out there that thinks the investment may not be smart long term? I enjoy the luxury of highspeed wired internet in Boston and LTE internet on my phone. In the short term, I am considering switching to an LTE hub for my home to get rid of Comcast completely. I could be wrong, but I feel like we will see rapid development of wireless technology which could make the entire 20bn investment somewhat foolish.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Unless there is some major advancement in physics, it is going to remain the fact that fiber in the ground is going to offer massively more capacity than wireless. For the foreseeable future, you're going to want to be able to maximize your total capacity by taking advantage of terrestrial links when you have them. As for switching to LTE--don't. I tried that here in New York, and it's not what it's cracked up to be. The only service with solid LTE performance is Verizon, and while the speeds are consistently good (5-8 megabits), they are "good" only as far as wireless goes, and it costs you $10/GB. I blow through 10-12 GB a month just barely using the internet, and not even downloading movies, etc. You'll spend several hundred dollars a month getting a decent amount of bandwidth, and for that price you can just get a decent cable connection for home and save the LTE for when you're on the go.
  - wtvanhest 14y ago
    Unless there is some major advancement in physics, it is going to remain the fact that fiber in the ground is going to offer massively more capacity than wireless. I'm not an expert in physics but if cell phones use radio waves and radio waves travel at the speed of light it seems like at some point technology will allow for very fast over the air data transfers without breaking any laws of physics. I have LTE on my AT&T phone and it seems pretty good, but I am definitely apprehensive about switching all my data to it in my house. I'll probably wait a few years, but if Comcast does anything to really infuriate me, I am likely to switch. [Added] I got a few downvotes on this one, while I don't care about the karma, I do want to say that I didn't mean to say "I'm not an expert" in a sarcastic way. My intention was to point out that I don't know what I am talking about.
cletus 14y ago
Ultimately I think Internet access will reach utility status (like water, electricity, telephony), meaning it will be a given (in the developed world at least and hopefully more and more of the developing world as time goes on). It's still priced as a premium product and there's no reason for this other than regional monopolies over the last mile. The one thing that confuses me about the France proposal is how they plan on building this for 20B euros when the NBN in Australia is estimated to cost A$36B [1] for a country with one third the population of France. The biggest cost in any communications network is the last mile so is proportional to population but inversely proportional to population density. Population density is low in Australia but there is 1/3 of the people. Additionally, there are significant regional infrastructure costs. It is more expensive per mile to build fibre in, say, New York City versus Tennessee. Inter-city links are really a small part of the total cost, even in a country as spread out as Australia (given the size, the population is 95% on the coast). Hopefully the NBN in Australia (which I'm a big supporter of) will survive the next election. The Opposition is sadly against it and the present government is hanging on by a thread and in leadership turmoil. For those not from Australia, the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, became PM after ousting Kevin Rudd in a partyroom coup d'etat in Rudd's first term, something with little precedent in Australian politics and certainly not in a PM's first term. For example, then-Treasurer Paul Keating ousted fourth-term PM Bob Hawke in much the same way. This sort of thing isn't generally favoured the electorate because (IMHO) it's perceived as the Number 2 saying "it's my turn to be Number 1" yet it plagues politics (Hawke-Keating, Howard-Costello, Blair-Brown in the UK, etc). Keating went on to narrowly win the "unwinnable" 1993 election and then get destroyed in 1996. Gillard narrowly won the last election with a minority in the House of Representatives [2]. Who became PM came down to horse-trading with minor parties and independents such that the change of a single seat changes the government. Obviously this is not a stable situation. Anyway, things look grim for the Gillard government as Kevin Rudd won't go away. He has already failed (twice?) to take back the top job in a partyroom ballot and the issue is rearing its ugly head again. Tony Abbott (the Opposition leader) has campaigned on a half-assed cheaper version of the NBN that is basically the same ADSL system for most people. Technically the proposal is FTTN (fibre to the node) where nodes are within 1.5km of premises and copper the rest of the way, which should improve bandwidth (ADSL2+ can do about 12Mbps at 1.5km and VDSL/VDSL2 could potentially raise that). The worst thing for Australian broadband (IMHO) would be for the NBN to be gutted in this nascent stage but it could happen if the Opposition wins big in the next election. Luckily for the NBN, the National Party, which notionally represents "rural" interests, the traditional party of the Liberal Party, is in favour of the NBN because current (and proposed) broadband solutions for rural areas suck hard. Now all we need is non-backwards reasonably priced broadband in the United States. We can but hope. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillard_Government#Minority_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillard_Government#Minority_gov...
elmotri 14y ago
Germany and UK were not even able to get in the ranking of the FTTH Council Europe… They do both not have 1% of all and at least 200.000 households connected to fiber… what a shame
- EwanToo 14y ago
  I don't know what the deal is in Germany, but in the UK BT have finally launched a FTTH option, so the numbers will start creeping up. The name, in case anyone wants to look it up, is "BT Infinity 160Mbps" - it's 160Mbps down, 20Mbps up. http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/faster-internet http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/fas...
- kayoone 14y ago
  In Germany you can easily get >100Mbps through cable in many cities. FTTH would be nice, but overall i dont think average broadband speeds are really lacking behind that much. I got 50/5Mbit cable at home and 120/10Mbit in the office.
- Nux 14y ago
  The internet in UK (London, Virginmedia) is terrible; whenever I need to download and especially upload something (some video, hires pictures, system backups) there is serious swearing involved. In comparison, _eight_ years ago in Bucharest I had 100/100 Mbps, just like anyone else. At least Virgin realised they suck at it and sold the Broadband division to UPC/Chello, but that's not much reason to be optimistic.
thomasstephn 14y ago
Hopefully it'll boost this branch of the French economy. Let's hope that on the way to reach that goal, the cost of internet stay the same (30€/month, 40$, for unlimited internet, unlimited landline phone calls and TV). Because it's maybe the best to learn of the French internet those days, its cost : http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_cost_of_connectivity http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_cost_of_connec...
kayoone 14y ago
As we are moving more and more towards cloud/web based services and streaming content, the quality of our internet connections is getting more and more important while the performance of our local hardware is losing importance as time moves on. Sometime it will probably end with big mainframes in datacenters and thin clients in forms of phones/tablets/pcs, much like it was before the PC revolution :)
lucb1e 14y ago
Last time I heard, they were so poor they got more money from the EU than they paid. Category Greece and Spain. Meanwhile we're only paying...
- seszett 14y ago
  That's always been wrong http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/europe/09/eu_budget_spending/img/graph_net_contrib_466x485.gif http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/europe/09/eu_budget_...
  - kl0nk 14y ago
    I don't know where this gif comes from but I have this source: http://ec.europa.eu/budget/figures/2011/2011_en.cfm http://ec.europa.eu/budget/figures/2011/2011_en.cfm So in terms of "Total 'national contributions'": DE: 21 189.9 FR: 19 075.6 IT: 14 517.6 UK: 12 918.3 It was published the 20/09/2012.
    - riffraff 14y ago
      the two things are not necessarily at odds: states put some money in (total national contributions), then take some more money out (resulting in net contributions).
ricardonunez 14y ago
I'm working in bringing high speed broadband to rural areas in the U.S. We are putting all energy in securing funding right now. You can't imagine how hard is for a start-up to secure funding for it. It has been exhausting. I applaud any initiative by the governments to invest in high speed internet.
- xhrpost 14y ago
  I'd be interested in hearing more about what you're doing and how (I have similar dreams). Shoot me an e-mail if you get a free minute (xhr@io2g.com).
- morphle 14y ago
  We have ways of funding fiber to the home and farm in the US and Europe. We have ample backbone capacity. Send me an email to discuss funding you. info at eigenglasvezel dot net
  - ricardonunez 14y ago
    Thank you for your offer. Right now I can't get into more detail. As soon as I can (Without getting into trouble), I'll post more news.
chaostheory 14y ago
Not many people remember, but the Clinton admin offered $200 billion in credits and tax cuts for US telcos to roll out fiber nationwide in 1996: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... http://www.cringely.com/2009/10/29/what-goes-around-teledesic-2-0/ http://www.cringely.com/2009/10/29/what-goes-around-teledesi... TDLR: through mergers and good lawyers, the telcos were able to get the $200 billion of Clinton tax credits in return for nothing. Obama is trying again with a $100 billion plan
- Variance 14y ago
  The Clinton administration bears a lot of blame for that--the government had a unique way of not, you know, actually making the credits conditional on rolling out nationwide fiber. Business is as business does, government is as government does, and apparently no one had the idea of modulating ISP rewards _after_ broadband service levels changed. I'm not sure you can blame the telcos for maximizing shareholder value as much as you can blame regulators for not understanding that the sky is blue.
  - bjourne 14y ago
    You're assuming that the government has the public's interest as it's main priority -- not that its purpose is to funnel value from the public to private owners pockets. That they are able to exploit the goodwill of the state isn't a flaw, it's a feature.
  - chaostheory 14y ago
    > I'm not sure you can blame the telcos for maximizing shareholder value as much as you can blame regulators for not understanding that the sky is blue. Actually you can. Regardless of legality, it is still stealing. I'm just really sick of people condoning this crap just because the motivation is to maximize shareholder value. There's a thing called ethics.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Does anyone of a credible study about this?
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Thats a much better idea than a railway no one cares about to birmingham
kl0nk 14y ago
Like every ideas there is some good and some bad. It's stupid to think about FTTH and FTTLA in the french countryside because nobody cares about it. We just have to wait and see how much will be actually spent in a useful way. I'm confident because in the past, France showed that it can make a success in telco.
- Vlaix 14y ago
  France is larger than Paris. The countryside isn't populated by cows only and I'm very much concerned about it.
seanp2k2 14y ago
Meanwhile in the US where technology is a huge part of our GDP http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Our-National-Broadband-Plan-is-a-TwoYearOld-Dunce-118909 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Our-National-Broadband-Pl...
martinced 14y ago
Desperate move... It's a desperate move and it may not be that smart in face of ever faster wireless. The problem with France is that for years they were bragging that they were the "4e plus grand puissance du monde" (world's 4th most powerful nation). Now they're fifth. By the end of Hollande's first mandate they'll be sixth (Brazil passing in front of them). If Hollande is re-elected, France could very well be out of the G8 by 2022 (ouch: three more places lost). Germany today said that french people only working 35 hours a week and only until 60 years simply isn't going to cut it. Oh, sure, it may somehow work. But not if you plan to stay relevant compared to the other countries. These are more words by Hollande: some more little faerie dust to dodge and delay discussing the real issue. Most notably: public spending representing 56% of the GDP and the private sector being taxed like crazy and which, hence, keeps shrinking and shrinking.

152 points by EwanToo 14y ago

vacri 14y ago

Hopefully the French public respond more maturely than the Australian public did to their similar plan - after years of bitching about how shit internet speeds were here, the gummint finally said "okay, we're going to build a great network with capacity for future use; it will be a great nation-building project", to which the public promptly turned on its heel and started whining about what a white elephant it was and how we have enough capacity and don't need the benefits...

jacques_chester 14y ago
You and I both know that the politics, economics and public finance implications of the NBN are far more complex than you're making them out to be. (We've crossed swords on the subject before)
- vacri 14y ago
  My comment is meant to be more lighthearted than serious political analysis, not to mention that we both also know that the general public have short memories and the tone is set by whomever is bitching at the moment. I certainly don't agree that the general public is aware of the complexities - vocal opponents of party X usually take any excuse that's currently going and run with it.
jvrossb 14y ago
Are you sure it's the same public? You're making it sound like the same people who were once for it swung against it.
- cpleppert 14y ago
  If he is referring to poll numbers likely he is taking them out of context and extrapolating tepid support for one element to majority support for the entire project. This happens a lot in the media analysis of polls. You can't take what the results of a poll question were and assume that 100% of the respondents in favor even: 1)know what the project is 2)favor it over alternatives 3)have judged the the disadvantages and are prepared for them 4)support it because they believe their party supports it 5)have faith in the political system This isn't about the wording per se. Context matters. To take a recent example: polls shows that Americans favor Obama over congressional republicans on economic issues. However, they still are (generally and marginally)opposed to his handling of economic issues and a strong minority of those who oppose the republicans do so out of a belief that they aren't cutting government enough. In other words, disillusioned republicans don't favor either party but aren't likely to support obama under any circumstances. You can look at the same polls with regard to china and democracy. Chinese both are satisfied with the direction of their country and want more democracy. If you aren't willing to consider context you can choose either poll to support your position.
- vacri 14y ago
  I'm talking more about the general public tone, but yes, I do know some people that made that exact switch. There's really not much cognitive dissonance involved. It reminds me of a friend of mine who grew up around poor people and was aware of how they struggle with money. Her family wasn't in poverty, but they weren't flush with money either. At around age 30, she made her way into the finance industry and started pulling down six figures. She mentioned that she got a raise recently, but had been infected by the finance mindset that any raise is tainted by the marginal tax rate, and was bitching that 'half of it went to the government' (for values where .37 = half, it seems). Anyway, her version of the story went 'the government taxes so much money out that I can't give as much to my single-mother sister who is scraping by on welfare - they should lower taxes [for this reason]'. I asked what about all the other single mothers our there that don't have sisters in high finance - reducing the tax yield would mean they get less. My friend changed her tune pretty fast and realised that hey, she was actually in a good position and should be positive about it instead of negative. The thing is, my friend wasn't someone who grew up amongst wealth, she knew what it was like to be poor, and she herself had worked the same shitty jobs as poor people everywhere. She was smart, and knew deeply about social opportunity (she dated a fiery, forthright anarchist for many years). People just tend to have short memories and short forethought and tend to think that what concerns them in the present is the most important thing always.

OGinparadise 14y ago

It's about $3 Billion a year. Not bad at all. US could have done this and fixed the power grid when we had that $800 Billion stimulus plan, at least we would have gotten something worthy out of it.

doe88 14y ago

It's about time to massively rollout FTTH in France. Paradoxically I think its deployment has been hampered by a good early ADSL coverage and the associated low prices on ADSL (with uncapped data). These low prices have decided the operators to only make minimum investments on their networks and to further seek to make profit in mobile where data plans are capped and where profits are better. Moreover the entry of a new actor in the mobile space last year has further exacerbated the situation, this actor has significantly reduced the subscriptions prices so the others actors seek to differentiate themselves and one way they found is to invest in LTE networks. So for all these reasons until now FTTH had low priority in France and is marginal. I hope it will change soon.

Jacqued 14y ago
Don't forget FTTLA, which is vastly available in the most densely populated urban areas - it is not as fast as FTTH when there are a lot of households connected to the last amplifier, but i'd say roughly 20% of households could have access to it. On the other hand, FFTH is available for maybe 0.5% of the country (I mean, even in Paris itself, not one building in twenty is connected to it...) I think you are right with your argument on cheap and good quality ADSL services : i think for most people an uncapped 10-20Mbps, that includes TV, phone, and our famous boxes for 30€ a month is more than enough...
- bambax 14y ago
  I only pay 32€ every other month, and I have more bandwidth than I need.
  - 18pfsmt 14y ago
    Could you imagine using your own hardware, on your own connection to run your bootstrapped side-project for $100/mo? I'd rather not have to pay Amazon, OVH, or whoever just to be able to service side-projects.

sambeau 14y ago

Britain would be better-off doing this rather than building ahigh-speed line. High speed internet for the whole country would be a massive stimulus to all sorts of new business ideas and working practices.

alan_cx 14y ago
Could be argued that if done properly and thoroughly, the rail line might not be necessary at all.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Eh, people doing internet things overestimate how game-changing fast internet is. I don't care how fast the internet is, people are still going to want to meet each other for dinner, see grand-babies in person, etc. Faster internet doesn't obviate the need for travel.
  - Retric 14y ago
    Cut even 1 trip in 50 and you can avoid building a lot of infrastructure. Netflix vs video rentals is one clear example of less trips, but there are plenty of others.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      1) Cutting 1 trip in 50 is actually a lot; 2) A 2% reduction in travel doesn't do much when e.g. U.S. air traffic alone is growing 2-3% every year and car traffic is increasing at 2-4% each year.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - Retric 14y ago
        Air travel is substituting for other forms of travel because it has become far cheaper with a 50% average cost savings between 1997 and 2006.

mtgx 14y ago

Only 50 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload? I guess it would be okay for rural areas, but it's awfully obsolete for cities, even today, let alone for 2023 - at least for an European country, especially one like France. And why such low upload speeds?

Jacqued 14y ago
Today in France, most people in cities can have access to 100Mbps/5Mbps. Low upload speeds have been a constant around here since the first broadband offering, with upload speeds capping at roughly one tenth or on twentielth of download speeds. I guess this is because the concept of Internet as an entirely decentralized network didn't make sense to France Telecom, the national operator which made the first investments. Why ? Because before Internet, France had the minitel, and entirely centralized network. And so as a pure client, you don't really need that much upload speed. Also, some argued that low upload speeds were maintained to harm illegal P2P file sharing. Nonetheless, we are seeing some symmetrical offers appear. Most notably, Orange (former France Telecom and France leading operator) is offering a 100/100Mbps connection for 45€/mo, whereas the 100/5 one costs 35€/mo.
- kl0nk 14y ago
  To give the entire picture, you should say that ADSL is asynchronous, and the 100/5 Mbps (and also 200Mbps/10 which I currently have, but only available in Paris) are offers offers are from "Numericable, which is a cable operator (and the only one) were/are really famous for their... err. problems (euphemism). In my last flat I was eligible to offers from "Free" ISP , and I got around 500Mbps to 800Mbps symectrical bandwith since it was only limited by the gigabit switch of the box. Sadly I had to move. And to be totally honest their peering problem (again euphemism since Youtube was slower than my smartphone with Orange in 3G) was killing the thrill. I got a faster "everyday" internet right now with 200/10/Mbps than during my "Free" days. (For the story Numericable has abandoned the peering part of the job and just buy bandwith to Level3, Neotelecoms, Telia and HE mainly. Their only job is to deploy and maintain a country wide backbone). During the 2000s France internet was really in advance, with the cheapest megabytes, but right now it tends to be like others countries :( The only good thing that remains is that traffic is always unlimited, in homes offers. The business market is still competitive. My point is I don't think €20B is really an answer, but that's not answering to how they are going to use it.

bjhoops1 14y ago

If you'd like to know more about why the U.S. lags insanely far behind in the broadband race, and why we pay ~ 4 times as much for our inferior service, check out David Cay Johnston's The Fine Print. I don't recommend it for anyone with blood pressure issues.

wtvanhest 14y ago

Is there anyone else out there that thinks the investment may not be smart long term? I enjoy the luxury of highspeed wired internet in Boston and LTE internet on my phone. In the short term, I am considering switching to an LTE hub for my home to get rid of Comcast completely. I could be wrong, but I feel like we will see rapid development of wireless technology which could make the entire 20bn investment somewhat foolish.

rayiner 14y ago
Unless there is some major advancement in physics, it is going to remain the fact that fiber in the ground is going to offer massively more capacity than wireless. For the foreseeable future, you're going to want to be able to maximize your total capacity by taking advantage of terrestrial links when you have them. As for switching to LTE--don't. I tried that here in New York, and it's not what it's cracked up to be. The only service with solid LTE performance is Verizon, and while the speeds are consistently good (5-8 megabits), they are "good" only as far as wireless goes, and it costs you $10/GB. I blow through 10-12 GB a month just barely using the internet, and not even downloading movies, etc. You'll spend several hundred dollars a month getting a decent amount of bandwidth, and for that price you can just get a decent cable connection for home and save the LTE for when you're on the go.
- wtvanhest 14y ago
  Unless there is some major advancement in physics, it is going to remain the fact that fiber in the ground is going to offer massively more capacity than wireless. I'm not an expert in physics but if cell phones use radio waves and radio waves travel at the speed of light it seems like at some point technology will allow for very fast over the air data transfers without breaking any laws of physics. I have LTE on my AT&T phone and it seems pretty good, but I am definitely apprehensive about switching all my data to it in my house. I'll probably wait a few years, but if Comcast does anything to really infuriate me, I am likely to switch. [Added] I got a few downvotes on this one, while I don't care about the karma, I do want to say that I didn't mean to say "I'm not an expert" in a sarcastic way. My intention was to point out that I don't know what I am talking about.

cletus 14y ago

Ultimately I think Internet access will reach utility status (like water, electricity, telephony), meaning it will be a given (in the developed world at least and hopefully more and more of the developing world as time goes on). It's still priced as a premium product and there's no reason for this other than regional monopolies over the last mile. The one thing that confuses me about the France proposal is how they plan on building this for 20B euros when the NBN in Australia is estimated to cost A$36B [1] for a country with one third the population of France. The biggest cost in any communications network is the last mile so is proportional to population but inversely proportional to population density. Population density is low in Australia but there is 1/3 of the people. Additionally, there are significant regional infrastructure costs. It is more expensive per mile to build fibre in, say, New York City versus Tennessee. Inter-city links are really a small part of the total cost, even in a country as spread out as Australia (given the size, the population is 95% on the coast). Hopefully the NBN in Australia (which I'm a big supporter of) will survive the next election. The Opposition is sadly against it and the present government is hanging on by a thread and in leadership turmoil. For those not from Australia, the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, became PM after ousting Kevin Rudd in a partyroom coup d'etat in Rudd's first term, something with little precedent in Australian politics and certainly not in a PM's first term. For example, then-Treasurer Paul Keating ousted fourth-term PM Bob Hawke in much the same way. This sort of thing isn't generally favoured the electorate because (IMHO) it's perceived as the Number 2 saying "it's my turn to be Number 1" yet it plagues politics (Hawke-Keating, Howard-Costello, Blair-Brown in the UK, etc). Keating went on to narrowly win the "unwinnable" 1993 election and then get destroyed in 1996. Gillard narrowly won the last election with a minority in the House of Representatives [2]. Who became PM came down to horse-trading with minor parties and independents such that the change of a single seat changes the government. Obviously this is not a stable situation. Anyway, things look grim for the Gillard government as Kevin Rudd won't go away. He has already failed (twice?) to take back the top job in a partyroom ballot and the issue is rearing its ugly head again. Tony Abbott (the Opposition leader) has campaigned on a half-assed cheaper version of the NBN that is basically the same ADSL system for most people. Technically the proposal is FTTN (fibre to the node) where nodes are within 1.5km of premises and copper the rest of the way, which should improve bandwidth (ADSL2+ can do about 12Mbps at 1.5km and VDSL/VDSL2 could potentially raise that). The worst thing for Australian broadband (IMHO) would be for the NBN to be gutted in this nascent stage but it could happen if the Opposition wins big in the next election. Luckily for the NBN, the National Party, which notionally represents "rural" interests, the traditional party of the Liberal Party, is in favour of the NBN because current (and proposed) broadband solutions for rural areas suck hard. Now all we need is non-backwards reasonably priced broadband in the United States. We can but hope. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillard_Government#Minority_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillard_Government#Minority_gov...

elmotri 14y ago

Germany and UK were not even able to get in the ranking of the FTTH Council Europe… They do both not have 1% of all and at least 200.000 households connected to fiber… what a shame

EwanToo 14y ago
I don't know what the deal is in Germany, but in the UK BT have finally launched a FTTH option, so the numbers will start creeping up. The name, in case anyone wants to look it up, is "BT Infinity 160Mbps" - it's 160Mbps down, 20Mbps up. http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/faster-internet http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/fas...
kayoone 14y ago
In Germany you can easily get >100Mbps through cable in many cities. FTTH would be nice, but overall i dont think average broadband speeds are really lacking behind that much. I got 50/5Mbit cable at home and 120/10Mbit in the office.
Nux 14y ago
The internet in UK (London, Virginmedia) is terrible; whenever I need to download and especially upload something (some video, hires pictures, system backups) there is serious swearing involved. In comparison, _eight_ years ago in Bucharest I had 100/100 Mbps, just like anyone else. At least Virgin realised they suck at it and sold the Broadband division to UPC/Chello, but that's not much reason to be optimistic.

thomasstephn 14y ago

Hopefully it'll boost this branch of the French economy. Let's hope that on the way to reach that goal, the cost of internet stay the same (30€/month, 40$, for unlimited internet, unlimited landline phone calls and TV). Because it's maybe the best to learn of the French internet those days, its cost : http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_cost_of_connectivity http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_cost_of_connec...

kayoone 14y ago

As we are moving more and more towards cloud/web based services and streaming content, the quality of our internet connections is getting more and more important while the performance of our local hardware is losing importance as time moves on. Sometime it will probably end with big mainframes in datacenters and thin clients in forms of phones/tablets/pcs, much like it was before the PC revolution :)

lucb1e 14y ago

Last time I heard, they were so poor they got more money from the EU than they paid. Category Greece and Spain. Meanwhile we're only paying...

seszett 14y ago
That's always been wrong http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/europe/09/eu_budget_spending/img/graph_net_contrib_466x485.gif http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/europe/09/eu_budget_...
- kl0nk 14y ago
  I don't know where this gif comes from but I have this source: http://ec.europa.eu/budget/figures/2011/2011_en.cfm http://ec.europa.eu/budget/figures/2011/2011_en.cfm So in terms of "Total 'national contributions'": DE: 21 189.9 FR: 19 075.6 IT: 14 517.6 UK: 12 918.3 It was published the 20/09/2012.
  - riffraff 14y ago
    the two things are not necessarily at odds: states put some money in (total national contributions), then take some more money out (resulting in net contributions).

ricardonunez 14y ago

I'm working in bringing high speed broadband to rural areas in the U.S. We are putting all energy in securing funding right now. You can't imagine how hard is for a start-up to secure funding for it. It has been exhausting. I applaud any initiative by the governments to invest in high speed internet.

xhrpost 14y ago
I'd be interested in hearing more about what you're doing and how (I have similar dreams). Shoot me an e-mail if you get a free minute (xhr@io2g.com).
morphle 14y ago
We have ways of funding fiber to the home and farm in the US and Europe. We have ample backbone capacity. Send me an email to discuss funding you. info at eigenglasvezel dot net
- ricardonunez 14y ago
  Thank you for your offer. Right now I can't get into more detail. As soon as I can (Without getting into trouble), I'll post more news.

chaostheory 14y ago

Not many people remember, but the Clinton admin offered $200 billion in credits and tax cuts for US telcos to roll out fiber nationwide in 1996: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... http://www.cringely.com/2009/10/29/what-goes-around-teledesic-2-0/ http://www.cringely.com/2009/10/29/what-goes-around-teledesi... TDLR: through mergers and good lawyers, the telcos were able to get the $200 billion of Clinton tax credits in return for nothing. Obama is trying again with a $100 billion plan

Variance 14y ago
The Clinton administration bears a lot of blame for that--the government had a unique way of not, you know, actually making the credits conditional on rolling out nationwide fiber. Business is as business does, government is as government does, and apparently no one had the idea of modulating ISP rewards _after_ broadband service levels changed. I'm not sure you can blame the telcos for maximizing shareholder value as much as you can blame regulators for not understanding that the sky is blue.
- bjourne 14y ago
  You're assuming that the government has the public's interest as it's main priority -- not that its purpose is to funnel value from the public to private owners pockets. That they are able to exploit the goodwill of the state isn't a flaw, it's a feature.
- chaostheory 14y ago
  > I'm not sure you can blame the telcos for maximizing shareholder value as much as you can blame regulators for not understanding that the sky is blue. Actually you can. Regardless of legality, it is still stealing. I'm just really sick of people condoning this crap just because the motivation is to maximize shareholder value. There's a thing called ethics.
rayiner 14y ago
Does anyone of a credible study about this?

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

Thats a much better idea than a railway no one cares about to birmingham

kl0nk 14y ago

Like every ideas there is some good and some bad. It's stupid to think about FTTH and FTTLA in the french countryside because nobody cares about it. We just have to wait and see how much will be actually spent in a useful way. I'm confident because in the past, France showed that it can make a success in telco.

Vlaix 14y ago
France is larger than Paris. The countryside isn't populated by cows only and I'm very much concerned about it.

seanp2k2 14y ago

Meanwhile in the US where technology is a huge part of our GDP http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Our-National-Broadband-Plan-is-a-TwoYearOld-Dunce-118909 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Our-National-Broadband-Pl...

martinced 14y ago

Desperate move... It's a desperate move and it may not be that smart in face of ever faster wireless. The problem with France is that for years they were bragging that they were the "4e plus grand puissance du monde" (world's 4th most powerful nation). Now they're fifth. By the end of Hollande's first mandate they'll be sixth (Brazil passing in front of them). If Hollande is re-elected, France could very well be out of the G8 by 2022 (ouch: three more places lost). Germany today said that french people only working 35 hours a week and only until 60 years simply isn't going to cut it. Oh, sure, it may somehow work. But not if you plan to stay relevant compared to the other countries. These are more words by Hollande: some more little faerie dust to dodge and delay discussing the real issue. Most notably: public spending representing 56% of the GDP and the private sector being taxed like crazy and which, hence, keeps shrinking and shrinking.