As France prepares to cross the symbolic threshold of 95% of premises eligible for fiber by the end of 2025, a subject that has long remained technical is coming back to the fore, that of the economic sustainability of public initiative networks (RIP). In her intervention at the AVICCA Trip, Anne Le Hénanff, the Minister in charge of digital technology and Telecoms, explicitly designated this issue as one of the “five major challenges” of the next digital decade, recognizing that it is no longer a marginal problem but a determining pillar for regional planning.
Anne Le Hénanff insisted on the need to “objectivize the situation” in order to “allow communities, infrastructure operators and commercial operators to conduct negotiations in good faith to develop contracts when it is relevant”. The signal is that the economic model of RIPs, built in an expansion phase, must now be re-examined as the networks enter maturity.
The dynamics of FTTH in public initiative zones is based on a fragile balance with heavy investments carried by communities, a level of sockets often more dispersed than expected and marketing which is running out of steam in parallel with the slowdown observed in private zones. This combination exerts direct pressure on the revenues of infrastructure operators, whose model is based on increasing penetration of end customers. The minister here takes up a subject that is now central to many elected officials, which is the ability of RIPs to maintain a sufficient level of income to ensure the maintenance, modernization and renewal of a network that has become critical.
Arcep, under the direction of Laure de La Raudière, plays a decisive role in this context. The Authority’s work, welcomed by the minister, aims to provide a quantified basis shared by all stakeholders, an essential prerequisite for possible contractual renegotiations. This perspective opens up a major political and industrial challenge: how to adapt contracts concluded sometimes ten years ago to an environment where uses have changed, operating costs have increased, and where the priority is shifting from massive deployments to quality of service, connection and resilience?
Rural FTTH conditions access to public services, the digital economy and territorial cohesion. Its sustainability is a local issue and the need for a new cycle of public-private investment, around renewed governance, is desired by elected officials.
The decade 2015-2025 will have been that of deployment. The 2025-2035 period will be that of stabilization, maintenance and financial viability.
