Meanwhile, the fiber world continues to move...
Last Friday, Free (Iliad) announced that they had opened up for retail sale their FTTH offering in the city center of Valenciennes in the North of France. While Free didn't say how many homes passed this represented today (probably no more than a few hundred) their plans are moving apace and they should have the full inner-city covered by the end of 2010, ie. 13.000 homes and businesses according to Univers Freebox.
This brings FTTH-grade services to Valenciennes since Free's offering hasn't changed: residential customers will get 100/50 connectivity, HD IPTV and free to wirelines in 70+ countries IP Telephony for the regular 30 EUR/month that Free has become famous for.
In addition, in accord with both regulatory obligations and their own announcements, Free's lines are available for unbundled wholesale back at their Central Office from day one.
Now you might say that considering the scope of the project this is pretty insignificant, and in the grand scheme of things you might be right. I think there are two important aspects worth mentioning here though:
- it suggests that Free's determination to deploy FTTH is intact, contrary to what has been said in the press in recent months. There's no doubt that the resistence they have encountered in Paris due to issues around vertical deployment in MDUs have slowed them down considerably, but why would they go out of their way to fiber up Valenciennes if they weren't commited?
- if there's any place where the socio-economic impact of high-bandwidth connectivity is likely to be measured, it's Valenciennes. The unemployment rate in this old heart of the French industry is close to 20%, over twice the national average in France. A lot of fiber advocates (myself included) have been stressing the socio-economic impact of FTTH, but it's been devilishly hard to gather accurate data to prove the point once and for all. I'm hoping for two things around this initiative:
- First that the public authorities in Valenciennes see this deployment as an opportunity to start doing things differently when it comes to delivering public services, boosting employment, etc.- Second, that someone who is interested in demonstrating the socio-economic impact of FTTH finances a study now to measure the current conditions so that there's a base of reference in three years to do the comparison on.
