Fibre to the home (FttH) networks are becoming the new infrastructure of reference in France for delivering electronic communication services, and fixed internet access in particular.
At a time when deployments and subscription rates are surging, elected officials, operators and users regularly report issues they are having with FttH networks to Arcep, notably via the Authority’s “J’alerte l’Arcep” platform: user’s line disconnected when a new subscriber is added, dilapidated street cabinets, temporary cut-offs, connection issues, etc. These issues have been observed on every network.
Improving the quality of FttH network operation, to future proof this infrastructure and ensure users’ satisfaction, is a top priority for Arcep. The Authority has been working with operators since 2019 to resolve the issues that have arisen, which led to the sector making a set of commitments in September 2022.
Two key avenues for the work being carried out by the sector: improving the quality of the service calls across the whole of France, and rehabilitating the most “fault-prone” networks
1. Improving the quality of service calls by commercial operators’ technicians on optical fibre networks, strengthening monitoring and fixing defective work
Under the aegis of Arcep, operators are working to improve the quality of service calls, strengthen industrial processes for supervising service calls, and fixing any defective work performed on infrastructures.
Work being done by the sector’s stakeholders helped to introduce new tools for checking the quality of service calls
One of the commitments made by the sector aims to improve the supervision of technicians’ service calls on optical fibre networks. Infrastructure operators now have the ability to know who is performing the work, where and when, thanks to a new tool called “e-intervention” (e-service call) introduced in Q2 2023. Operators are now working on improving this tool to alert the technician making the service call on behalf of the commercial operator when the subscriber has been cut off, so that their line can be restored as quickly as possible.
Regarding connection quality, operators have implemented a service call report system. Today, a record is made of virtually every service call, including photos, which the commercial operator sends to the infrastructure operator. The infrastructure operator’s analysis of the report should help make it easier to detect any problems with the work performed, and request that commercial operators fix them.
As a parallel measure, operators are working to improve the training provided to technicians working on the networks, by creating a seal of approval for technicians and sub-contractors. This seal of approval mechanism is being adopted more and more widely.
2. Restoring the most dilapidated networks
A small number of networks, representing around 2% of all fibre lines in Metropolitan France, have a rate of failure that is well above the national average. Qualified as fault-prone, most of these networks are now being rehabilitated by the infrastructure operators that operate them. Several rehabilitation plans for these networks with a high rate of failure have thus been notified to Arcep, which closely monitors how they are affecting the quality of the optical fibre networks in question. These plans are due to be complete by the end of 2024. The work itself is being done on:
- rehabilitating shared access points and all of the infrastructure in the shared access points’ service area;
- network provisioning;
- realigning operators’ information systems with the reality in the field.
Arcep provides regular updates on all of this work on its website.
Today, Arcep is publishing a scorecard to provide an assessment of the ongoing work to improve network quality
In this new scorecard of FttH network quality Arcep publishes data collected from infrastructure operators and commercial operators. Two types of indicator are provided for each of the optical fibre networks deployed in France: connection failure rate and the rate of failure on these networks. Map-based depictions of these indicators and infographics provide an ongoing view of their evolution over time, allowing users to see the tremendous disparities between different parts of the country and between the networks. The underlying data are also being published.
The information provided by this scorecard will enable local authorities and, more broadly, every stakeholder to assess the effects of infrastructure operators’ network rehabilitation plans and, over time, the effects of the actions taken to improve the quality of service calls on the networks. It will come to complete the information collected on the condition of infrastructures, notably during the audits conducted by operators and local authorities, and the field analysis that Arcep performed during the first half of 2022.
This scorecard is to be published on a quarterly basis, and could be gradually enhanced with the addition of new indicators.