Optical fiber: Orange makes new commitments to the government

Negotiations lasted nine months. But Orange and the government have finally reached an agreement. While the executive and certain elected officials see the fiber optic project slowing down, the operator has accepted new commitments, including a “right to connection” (outside rural areas) for non-eligible French people who would nevertheless like to switch to this very high speed technology. Overall, the effort for Orange could reach several hundred million euros.

This agreement comes as fiber optic deployments begin to decline, ten years after the launch of the France Très Haut Débit plan, which aimed to generalize fiber throughout the territory before 2025. With 83% coverage, France is today one of the best covered European countries. But the pace is weakening: since 2022, the deployments carried out each year (4.2 million lines in 2023) have fallen below the 2019 level, according to the Infranum federation. And the number of connections to customers has been halved, from around 20,000 per day to 10,000.