ARCEP updates its March 2012 decision on gathering information on interconnection and routing on the internet

Paris, 26 March 2014

On 29 March 2012, ARCEP adopted a decision introducing periodic campaigns for gathering information on the technical and pricing terms governing interconnection and routing. The purpose of this Decision (1) – which is part of the work that ARCEP has been performing since 2010 – was to improve the Authority’s knowledge and understanding of interconnection and routing markets.

Feedback and lessons drawn from the first three rounds of information gathering in 2012 and 2013, along with the administrative inquiry that ARCEP conducted between November 2012 and July 2013 into interconnection between Iliad and Google (2), have led the Authority to amend its 2012 decision. It seemed particularly necessary that the information supplied by stakeholders reflect the routing capacity that is actually available for interconnection, and make it possible to assess the scale of any traffic overload on the links.

This is why ARCEP submitted its proposed amendments to public consultation, from 12 December 2013 to 13 January 2014.

Now that this work is complete, the decision that ARCEP is publishing today introduces two main changes to the system established in 2012:

- distinguish the installed and configured capacity on each interconnection link covered by the decision;
- allow ARCEP to request additional information periodically, to enable it to assess the scale of a presumed traffic overload on interconnection links.

For the sake of simplicity, ARCEP has also reduced the amount of information that operators are required to provide, and the number of relationships covered by the decision.

Stakeholders must begin using the new questionnaire, resulting from the amended decision, in the second half of 2014. Reponses to the questionnaires submitted in the first half of this year can therefore remain confined to the data stipulated in the initial appendix to the March 2012 decision.


(1) This decision was appealed to the Conseil d’Etat, but the Council of State rejected the requests from AT&T and Verizon on 10 July 2013, recognizing ARCEP’s ability to collect information, including from economic stakeholders whose headquarters are located outside of France, once their business has an impact on internet users in France.

(2) Administrative inquiry into the technical and financial conditions governing traffic routing between different companies, opened by Decision No. 2012-1545 of 22 November 2012 (pdf - 310KB) and closed by Decision No. 2013-0987 of 16 July 2013 (pdf - 275KB)