FTTH Business Guide - AWT.be

Example: NGA Regulation in France
In November 2009, the French Competition Commission approved regulator
ARCEP's draft decision and recommendation on the general terms and conditions
for access to fibre-optic electronic communication lines.
For the purposes of FTTH regulation, ARCEP divided France into three zones,
according to housing density:
� Zone 1: large cities, where operators can reasonably expect to make a profit.
� Zone 2: less dense towns and cities, where infrastructure competition is
unlikely to emerge, and some public funding of FTTH may be needed;
� Zone 3: rural areas where the business case for fibre is challenging and a large
amount of public funding is needed.
Zone 1 includes areas with a concentrated population where it is economically
possible for several operators to deploy their own infrastructure, in this case
optical fibre networks, in the vicinity of customer premises. According to ARCEP,
148 municipalities fall inside Zone 1, representing 5.16 million households.
For such areas, the regulator is generally in favour of a multi-fibre solution
between the subscriber and a local access point. To prevent repetitive
installations in the same building, the operator must install fibre to all apartments
in the building, and the in-building network must be opened to other operators
upon request. The building operator should install four fibres if there is more than
one service provider in the building, otherwise one fibre will suffice.
ARCEP also defines the cases where the local connection point for access to inbuilding
fibre wiring can be located on private property. As a rule of thumb, the
local connection point should be located outside the limit of individual private
properties. Nevertheless, the local access point could be placed inside if the
number of subscribers per building is at least 12, or the building is served by the
accessible galleries of a public network, such as the sewers of Paris, regardless of
the number of subscribers per building.
In the near future, ARCEP will be submitting its draft decision and
recommendation to the European Commission and to the other authorities,
before its publication and entry into force by the end of 2010.
Discussions about how to regulate Zones 2 and 3 are ongoing. Topics still to be
decided include whether or not it would be best to build a single, open network
infrastructure, public funding, the position of the vertical sharing point, etc.
51 www.ftthcouncil.eu