French businesses call for FTTH deployment

I am not, overall, very admirative of French business associations and their representatives . They are quick to point out the friction induced by regulation and worker protection laws, but slow or reluctant to admit that they themselves may be antiquated in the way they do business, deal with their employees or embrace opportunities provided by globalisation and/or technological disruption.

So it came to me as a mild surprise to see in the latest MEDEF report, simply entitled Proposer (To Propose) an endorsement of Very High Bandwidth services to the home. MEDEF is the French business owners/managers' Union (yes, even our managers have unions!) In truth Proposer is not a general policy document, since the subtitle focuses its aim on new technologies: How to make of France a leader in the Digital Economy. Here is a rough translation of the high level view from the executive summary:

MEDEF's proposal are based on five pillars:

1 Liberate the energies of new ICT businesses

• Lighten the constraints and help the growth of all players in the sector
• Implement a number of measures particularly significant for innovative SMEs of the digital economy
• Develop the software sector in France
• Make the French Embedded Software and Electronics sectors more dynamic
• Accelerate the development of TV over mobile

2 Reinforce ICT usage

• Launch big programs around societal issues
• Develop usage within businesses and particularly amongst SMEs
• Develop usage within the administration
• Develop usage within the public through training and by reducing the digital divide

3 Adapt infrastructures and frequency management to new stakes and uses

• Develop very high bandwidth infrastructures
• Optimise frequency management

4 Prepare the future

• Reinforce our ICT Research and Innovation capacity
• Develop the role of ICT in training
• Significantly reinforce the influence of France in terms of regulation, norms and standards
• Reinforce the attractiveness of France

5 Implement strong governance

• Draw inspiration from governance examples in countries more advanced in terms of digital economy
• Implement a strong governance at a national level

As you can see this feels more like a wish list than a policy document, but I did read the short paragraphs on Very High Bandwidth infrastructures in more detail, just to assess the seriousness of MEDEF on that count/ Here are their actual "proposals":

• Accelerate facilities based competition, which is the best guarantee for the growth of very high bandwidth in Europe

That's a bit silly and a profound misunderstanding of the technical unlikeliness of any serious facilities based competition outside of Paris...

• Raise awareness within the civil society and favor public understanding on very high bandwidth issues

The reasoning here is that if people know about it, they're going to want it, which is fairly misguided since the telecoms market is a supply driven market and has been for many years. Still, awareness is never a bad thing...

• Define ambitious goals within the context of territory management policies, both in terms of population served by Very High Bandwidth (for example 80% of the population served by 2012) and of national coverage in order to reduce the digital divide.

This is laudable and fairy-tale-esque at the same time. The government may well set objectives, but if a deployment model isn't favoured, it will come to nothing in the end. Policy must preceed action if the digital divide is to be reduced, and that's why it's sometimes frustrating that the policy world and the deployment world work in different time frames...

• Raise awareness of local governments in terms of the role they can play to reduce deployment costs of optic fiber networks.

This is an important point, even though it's just information. In fact going a step further by recommending that the government encourage, or even legislate to ensure that local governments put these measures into place would have been bolder.

• Encourage "public private" synergies to make the deployment of very high bandwidth more dynamic and confer to local governments a mission of facilitator of the deployment of such infrastructure within the framework of territory management policies.

This again is sensible, except MEDEF doesn't seem to know whether they want public money in this or not. They seem to hint at private money only but public involvement and try to ignore the fact that this will not in any way contribute to reducing the digital divide.

Overall, the intentions are laudable, and they have at least a high level understanding of the benefits of very high bandwidth. The policy recommendations, however, need more thought. Still, our illustrious (if short) leader eats in the MEDEF's hands more often than not, so it can only be a good thing that they demand FTTH for all, even though the path they outline to get there is hazy at best...