1/ Do you think that public authorities should call on a neutral operator who would mutualise the construction and the marketing of telecommunication networks?

The question in the operational application of these networks is to know if it is appropriate to let private operators and companies take action on their own, perhaps in a relatively disordered manner, for their FTTX network or to have one company take action, which would be a unifying company and in particular a company delegated by the public service involved.

Probably for the public service, it is most appropriate to have a company which is a unifying company, since that would avoid having several companies taking action one after another on the same problem, therefore we would minimise the obstruction or the problems of working on the roads, inside buildings, inside rising columns and this is a very important factor for public services.

In addition, the fact of having a neutral company which undertakes, as part of its public service delegation, to take a certain number of actions, whether that concerns the content of services, of price lists, on the obligations of the public service, it is also a commitment for long term security for the public service compared to market operators who may be subject to financial problems or technical problems. It is therefore a commitment for long term security and a guarantee for public services to do business with a company which is delegated by the public service involved.

2/ Do you think that social housing managers or other property managers should take direct action on FTTX or should they be only facilitators?

Regarding this question, I tend to think that it would be preferable that they should be facilitators because being a telecommunication company is a trade where you have to know what you are doing. There is an experience curve and these are not things that you can learn from one day to the next.

So everyone to his own trade, it is clear that it is preferable for the managers to be facilitators but facilitators in a certain sense that is to say that this does not concern organising oligarchies between private companies.

It seems to me that the managers have a more dynamic role to play. The managers are facilitators and must be facilitators for opening the FTTX networks up to competition. Opening up to competition does not mean simply facilitating the passage of three or four operators. The simple role of managers must go beyond organising an oligarchy, it must provide conditions of access to competition, open to all operators whoever they may be, it must be able to enter buildings in a neutral manner and without any discrimination.

3/ To what extent is the cost of the FTTX network installation a determining factor in choosing the solutions to be used?

Since this concerns the FTTX networks, one of the first questions is that of the cost and for the local public services, it is a totally determining factor.

Therefore to attempt to minimise the amount of that investment, the solution would be the use of lightened civil engineering techniques.

The position of public services in France as regards those lightened civil engineering techniques is controversial because in reality certain public service are hostile to the use of those techniques and other ones are more favourable.

And even, there is no objective reason not to use those techniques because in fact it is not necessary, and here the legal analysis and legal experts have demonstrated it, to change the regulations on roads in order to use those lightened civil engineering techniques. On the other hand there are provisions to be taken to make such action safe, including provisions for the coordination of the work and also action in the public field to be controlled to prevent any type of malfunction.

This concerns work which has a relatively high cost. Therefore public services must know if they have the financial resources for FTTX networks of a certain size and capillarity. If they do not have those resources, we know that there are wide possibilities today within public services with regard to investments, since these lightened civil engineering techniques can limit the amount of the public financial contribution for these networks.