11 DECEMBER 2008 By Stephen Hardy -- France Telecom has accused one of its competitors, Free, of holding up FTTH deployments by not cooperating in tests designed to promote shared access to potential customers.
French telecommunications and posts regulator ARCEP has mandated that carriers that bring fibre to homes and multiple-dwelling units in the country make that infrastructure available to other service providers as a way to promote service-based competition. France Telecom says it has "held pragmatic and open negotiations with its rivals" to create a blueprint for testing approaches toward such infrastructure sharing, which is commonly called "mutualisation."
As an example of its good faith efforts towards this end, France Telecom pointed to an agreement it signed in September of this year with SFR. The tests will cover architectures in which either a single fibre or four fibres are installed per customer.
However, the carrier says it is having no such luck working with Free. "Up until now, Free has refused all proposed agreements, demanding the systematic deployment of the multi-fibre solution, which has not yet been fully tested. This approach, to a great extent, denies people living in buildings that are fibred by Free, notably in Paris, the freedom to choose another operator," France Telecom complained in a statement to the press.
"In this way, Free is blocking the implementation of a general agreement on the mutualisation of vertical fibring, a prerequisite for the large-scale deployment of fibre," the carrier added.
The fact that France Telecom and Free are pursuing different architectural approaches to FTTH shouldn't be a barrier towards joint testing, the French incumbent provider asserted. "Free has been able, without any difficulty, to connect up its customers in buildings fibred by Orange based on the single-fibre solution, which confirms that this solution is compatible both with Orange's technological choice (GPON architecture, the most widespread in Asia and the US) and with the solution (point to point) favoured by Free," the carrier said.
While it was in a complaining mood, France Telecom used the same press statement to take a shot at the current French regulatory environment. The carrier said it plans to commit significant resources to the deployment of high-speed broadband services across the country in line with France's 2012 Digital Plan. However, "the regulatory authority's positions on the conducting of tests do not provide operators with the clarity required on the legal framework within which they will need to take investment decisions, even though proceedings on this subject have been ongoing since July 2007 with the French competition council as requested by Free.
"The legal framework for the future market for very high speed broadband will need to be clarified in order to give all players interested in investing the legal stability required for the development of this market," the statement concluded.
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