Last week, French Senator Hervé Maurey released a report made at the request of French Prime Minister François Fillon, which explained how the French government can accelerate the deployment of fiber to the home (FTTH) infrastructure in France and prevent the creation of a digital divide between urban and rural areas. It is well known that [...]
Last Friday in Paris, the French regulator ARCEP held a press conference to announce that Iliad-Free will be the new mobile operator in France. It has taken five years for the French government to bring a fourth operator market because of strong opposition from the other incumbents, France Télécom-Orange, SFR and Bouygues. ARCEP had no [...]
Jean Louis Missika, a deputy Mayor of Paris in charge of technology, has wasted no time in taking advantage of the end of the “fiber war” among the four major operators in France (Iliad-Free, France Télécom, SFR and Numéricable). He brought them together the to sign a “charter of good conduct” whose aim is to [...]
At the Broadband World Forum Europe held in Paris last week, several announcements revealed that Eastern European countries have been driving broadband growth in fiber to the home (FTTH) and fiber to the building (FTTB) deployments. The FTTH Council Europe presented the results of a survey conducted by iDate on the progress of FTTH/FTTB in [...]
Considered “an essential infrastructure for our society”, 4G mobile networks are now a top priority for the European Commission which has just decided to fund research related to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. As of 1 January 2010, the EU will invest €18 million into research that will underpin next generation 4G mobile networks. “With [...]
The European Commission announced this week that ten mobile phone vendors have signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) regarding the “Harmonisation of Charging Capability for Mobile Phones” that will cover mobile phones and a majority of devices using radio frequencies to be sold in Europe. This new unified charger creates a new European standard and [...]
Last week, Jean-Ludovic Silicani, the new president of ARCEP, held a press conference and announced several propositions to stimulate commercial investment in FTTH deployment in France. These propositions were put together after year of tense negotiations between ARCEP, the operators and local collectives. They will be issued for public consultation in July and are expected [...]
European countries are now actively discussing the impact of the new generation of broadband networks to be put in place for the next decade. Last week, the European Commission issued a set of revised proposals for the regulation of Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband networks, in the form of a draft Commission Recommendation. This draft [...]
The French Conseil Constitutionnel, the highest court in France (equivalent to the US Supreme Court), has ruled that certain provisions of the recently passed Hadopi Law are unconstitutional. In particular, the court held that the decision to terminate the Internet access of people found illegally downloading content, must be taken by a judge, not by [...]
The recent Iliad-Free press release boasting of the world’s largest community Wi-Fi network has left many of us skeptical and puzzled. I posed a few questions to Xavier Niel, CEO of Iliad-Free, about the configuration of the network and the company’s intentions. Niel confirmed the network is now in beta “just like Gmail” with thousands [...]
