Paris (AFP)
The telecoms regulatory authority (Arcep) said Tuesday "extremely concerned about the issue of noodle dishes", which designate the disorderly connections of optical fibers in the network sharing cabinets, and intends to put an end to it.
"We note that there have been drifts" on the sharing of responsibilities concerning the connection of the fiber, "certain operators undoubtedly did not supervise their subcontractors enough and let pig practices take place ", answered the president of Arcep Sébastien Soriano, questioned on the question during his last annual conference on the telecoms market before the end of his mandate at the end of the year.
Pooling points are physical cabinets at the foot of buildings or in residential areas where infrastructure operators, who have installed the network, interconnect, and commercial operators, who connect the connection for their customers.
Photos published on social networks - showing cabinets that have remained open or taken by technicians - show cases where the multiple connections of hundreds of cables have caused, according to the expressions used, a knot bag, or a "noodle dish". This can lengthen connection times and cause connection errors.
Arcep has defined new rules after a working group. According to a "first roadmap", they give police power to the infrastructure operator, who can report to commercial operators, or even "dereference", the subcontractors responsible for poor workmanship.
"The infrastructure operator will be responsible for the good behavior of the cabinet. Commercial operators will have to obey it," said Mr. Soriano, wishing "to prevent a few bad apples from destroying the extremely professional work of most of the other subcontractors ".
"Fiber optics will ultimately support all access" and its deployment "must be done under conditions that are clean," he said.
Fiber optics is a crucial technology for the very high speed plan (THD) aiming to cover the entire territory with different fixed and mobile technologies in 2022.
The government's objective is to generalize it to all households in 2025, but "all the support systems (on this last objective) are not complete", observed Mr. Soriano, who asked the question of "level ambition of the public authorities "on the subject.
© 2020 AFP