Two weeks ago I wrote about the cablecos winning the right to use "fiber optic" in their adverts even though they don't use fiber all the way (What's in a word). Yesterday, I was informed by gold subscriber Lionel that FT is doing exactly the same thing with Numéricable here in France. There's an article in Degroupnews about it (France Telecom porte plainte contre Numéricable).
Essentially, our incumbent objects to Numéricable using the terminology Fiber Optic (fibre optique) in their adverts even though they don't technically do fiber to the home but only fiber to the last amplifier. Coincidentally, I was having a discussion about this with people from Cisco yesterday and they happened to have Numéricable's latest information booklet with them. Clearly, ambiguity on this issue is maintained in most of the literature, but one of the schematics clearly states that the last meters or dozens of meters are coax. Of course, in the placards and TV adverts that nuance is not present.
I think it's all a bit silly. The customer doesn't care if it's fiber, airwaves, satellites of psychic flux, what he wants is very high bandwidth and associated services. This is more symptomatic of the fact that France Telecom is worried about Numéricable's fast pace in moving towards FTTLA, which may be paradoxically the first good sign for Numéricable in a long while. Their image and rights-of-way issues may be far from over, but it looks like they are making the most of the window of opportunity offered to them while they can...
