how to choose ? What package?

Since the last update of this file, Free has launched new offers dedicated to fiber. And with these new offers, they are also new boxes that the operator has unveiled. Admittedly, the Freebox One is not revolutionary, but it is offered at a great price, especially as we have a subscription to Netflix included in the price. The real innovation comes from the Delta Freebox, which benefits from a 10 G-EPON technology that offers a maximum downstream flow of 8 Gb / s. Also capable of hosting up to 4 hard drives internally usable in RAID, the Freebox Delta is undoubtedly the most advanced box in terms of technology. On the other hand, the device still suffers from numerous bugs and endless shipping delays. It will be necessary to wait a few months before getting a real idea of ​​its interest, especially as for now, it is really not given … And that Free does not offer preferential offers the first year, unlike competing ISPs.

Optical fiber, operators (Bouygues, Free, Orange and SFR) talk more and more, but what is it exactly? To do, just remember that fiber is a process based on glbad wire or plastic : it allows to drive light, especially computer data. This data can be used to transmit audio (= phone), video (= TV or videoconference) or be purely computer (= web, messaging, sending large files, etc.). On the contrary, a ADSL connection is based on the same technology as the ancestral phone line and uses a pair of copper wires.

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>> Free, SFR, Orange, Bouygues, who has the best box?

Fiber: a much faster connection than ADSL

Optical fiber offers many advantages for its users : apart from the immediate display of web pages, it allows to download much larger files quickly, whether in HTTP, FTP, Newsgroups or P2P networks. Of course, all this if you have in front of servers that send the data just as quickly. In addition, its users benefit from all HD channels without any interruption due to a flow problem. And they have no problem receiving programs in 4K, even if they are still few. Finally, they can continue surfing as if nothing had happened or to record another TV program at the same time.

Unbeatable flow and stability

How is such a flow possible? Contrary to debit of ADSL, which varies according to several factors (quality of the line, distance from the DSLAM …), that of the optical fiber is stable and constant. The attenuation of the signal is minimal over several tens of kilometers, unlike the copper wire of ADSL, which requires much more regular repeaters (every 4 or 5 km) to ensure a proper connection to subscribers.

The advantages of optical fiber facing an ADSL connection are therefore multiple. The debit is the shock-argument of the fiber. We take advantage of a download speed of at least 100 Mb / s (or 12.5 MB / s) on a fiber line. Some offers can go up to 1 Gb / s (125 MB / s). In comparison, in the best case, this same flow is only 20 Mb / s (or 2.5 MB / s) on an ADSL line.

Same thing for sending data (upload): in transmission, the optical fiber offers a bit rate of 10 to 250 Mb / s (or 1.25 to 25 Mb / s). For its part, the ADSL does not exceed 1 Mb / s (or 125 Kb / s).

You're not convinced yet ? Here are other figures at the national level: the average speed of download in ADSL (download) is actually 7.20 Mb / s on all the territory (source: Ariase). We are therefore far from the 20 Mb / s that operators sometimes promise wrongly. In comparison, the very high speed in France offers an average throughput of 83.60 Mb / s. Here, we are closer to 100 Mb / s that operators sell us.

Finally, last element to be taken into consideration: ping (or round-trip time). This is the latency between your computer or console, and a remote server. It is measured in millisecond. The ping measurement is the great workhorse of the players, who needed a very low latency to play in very good conditions. Without a fiber connection, the ping is usually between 30 and 50 ms. Thanks to fiber, we go below 10 ms, and can even drop to 1 or 2 ms. What to play in ideal conditions to any FPS or to subscribe to a game streaming service like the one offered by Shadow.

>> Ookla, nPerf, Google: which connection test can you trust?

How is the connection made to the optical fiber?

The deployment of optical fiber is done in three steps:

1. the operator begins with fiber streets. This is called the horizontal deployment ;
2. the installation of the fiber is then carried out inside the building. It's the vertical deployment ;
3. the fiber is installed in the housing. It's about final connection.

A connection that can be immediate … or not!

The time required to connect the fiber is variable. There are no rules: some households can wait for more than two years the connection of their building, while the fiber is already deployed in their street. In others, it is almost immediate.
If you live in a building, you will also have to submit an application to the syndical council of co-ownership. Again, the delay is quite long, since the request is usually submitted at the board meeting, which takes place once a year. If the board has no reason to oppose the installation of fiber, there is however a grievance that comes almost systematically: the visibility of the installation cables. Most of the co-owners want the cables to be inserted into the existing ducts. Clearly, the fiber is installed in the ducts that are already used for telephone and / or electrical cables, so as not to distort the common areas. Here again, a little delay is to be expected, the time that the operator moves and can see or not the feasibility of the operation.

Finally, there is an incompressible 3 months for condominiums between the end of installation work and the actual installation of optical fiber in the apartments. This is the time required for competing operators to manifest if they also want to exploit the fiber network of a home. On the other hand, in the case of an individual dwelling, there is no delay and the fiber can be accessible as soon as it is installed.

Who does the work and how much does it cost?

If you live in a house or a small building less than 12 dwellingsyou will have to pay the installation fee. These usually amount to 149 euros. In case you live in a building of more than 12 dwellings, good news: the installation is totally Free.
In all cases, it is an operator who is responsible for performing installation and connection work to your home. You have nothing to do, it takes care of everything and even put in place and adjust your box during the first installation.

How come cables and a fiber connection?

Once your home is connected to the outside, it's time to connect the cable to your box. The link is made using a dedicated cable, which has nothing to do with conventional Ethernet cable. It looks like this:

All boxes are not compatible with the default fiber, but most are using a small additional box. This is the case, for example, of Orange's old box, Orange's Livebox v3. This is accompanied by a tiny black adapter, which is the link between your fiber connection and your box clbadic. It is in this form:

This adapter tends to disappear on the new box, and this is particularly the case on the Livebox v4. In fact, it is directly integrated into the boxes of the latest generation. Then comes the time to connect the box to the rest of all your equipment (computers, connected TV, console, etc.). There, no need to change anything: the box provided by your ISP always has a link Wireless clbadic, and 2 or 4 Ethernet ports. So you just have to connect to your box as you did before with your ADSL or VDSL connection.

Why do we often talk about FTTLA, FTTB and FTTH?

When it comes to optical fiber, it is important to familiarize yourself with various initials. But rest badured, terms like this, there are only three to remember: FTTH, FTTB and FTTLA. And you'll see, it's finally quite simple to navigate:

• FTTLA = Fiber To The Last Amplifier. This term refers to a fiber network that stops up to an amplifier located in the neighborhood (so a little far from your home). The data transmission is then resumed in coaxial and distributed to several houses and buildings of the district.
• FTTB = Fiber To The Building. This is the fiber network routed to the bottom of your building, or that stops at your gate or the door of the house. As for the FTTLA, the data is then broadcast using a coaxial cable.
• FTTH = Fiber To The Home. It is the fiber network that reaches your home. At present, it can reach up to 2 Gb / s (250 MB / s) whether in rising speed and in descending speed. In fact, the operators offer a maximum of 1 Gb / s download, and 200 Mb / s upload, which is already substantial.

There are many other acronyms, such as FTTN (fiber to the neighborhood), FTTS (fiber to the street) or FTTC (fiber to the sidewalk). But it's mostly the FTTLA, the FTTB and the FTTH that will interest us here.

True fiber / false fiber: what is the difference between optical fiber and coaxial cable?

This is where the terms of FTTLA, FTTH, FTTB will serve us. These three names are important because the rates between the FTTH on one side and the FTTLA / FTTB on the other are very different.
In all cases, we are dealing with very high speed (THD). And in all cases, the downflow can reach between 800 Mbps and 8 Gbps.
In contrast, the flow rate is much lower for an FTTLA link:

• in FTTH, he's from 200 Mb / s at least
• in FTTLAhe is from only 40 Mb / s. Not practical when you want to send large files on the Cloud, FTP, etc.

>> And also: true fiber / false fiber: Free attack Numéricable-SFR in court

FTTH vs FTTLA: to each his technology

1. If all operators have deployed a network FTTH (Pure fiber, therefore), they did not do it at the same speed or the same scale. The palm of the best coverage comes back to Orange, which has installed an FTTH connection in more than 600 cities in France (source: Ariase). In comparison, SFR has deployed FTTH fiber in 310 municipalities, which is already not so bad. Free has 61 on his list, while Bouygues only 44.
2. The champion of FTTLA remains undeniably SFR, which has deployed this technology in 869 French cities. Off the record, this still represents 73% of the operator's very high speed installations, ie 5 million households. So yes, these homes take advantage of very high speed, but "fiber" from start to finish.

Since 1 June 2016, operators providing a FTTLA connection rather than FTTH have been required to state "except home connection". Clearly, this clarification makes it possible to inform the consumer more explicitly about the type of connection that equips their home. The FAI SFR has long played on words and put all his eggs in the same basket: he used the term fiber to designate all his offers. He was recently forced to review his communication. The supplier now uses the term Very high speed (rather than fiber) to designate its cable or FTTLA offerings. Nevertheless, he continues to use the term fiber with his RED offer.

>> To read: how RED SFR replaces your fiber with cable … without terminating!

19.6 million local concerned, and a situation in constant evolution

According to'ARCEP, in the 3rd quarter of 2018, 19.6 million residential and business premises are eligible for very high speed throughput of at least 30 Mb / s (which includes cable, fiber and VDSL2 THD). When looking at FTTH connections, Arcep has 12.5 million premises (including cable and fiber).
Very high speed is still very far from being really established in France. A few years ago, the government committed to connecting all of France by 2022 with very high speed (80% fiber and 20% using other technologies such as coaxial cable). This project seems today totally unrealizable, because of many additional costs related to the installation of the fiber (one went from 20 to 34.9 billion estimated), but also because the ISPs did not follow this will of deployment, with the exception of Orange perhaps.
The situation could improve slowly, but surely. Operators are redoubling their efforts to connect businesses and individuals to fiber, starting with Orange. The blow was especially for Altice, the parent company of SFR-Numericable, which announced in 2017 its desire to fly on its own, without any subsidy from the state. The operator was planning to deploy his own fiber network throughout France. Its objective was to cover 80% of the zones by 2022, to reach the figure of 100% in 2025. Cost of the operation: 16 billion dollars. Lack of luck, Arcep finally rejected SFR's bid to bundle the entire territory. Operators will have to work hand in hand.

A very limited choice of operators

Currently, can one choose his operator once all the installation work done? In theory, yes: just because an operator is connecting to fiber optic in your street and in your building does not mean that a competitor does not have the right to settle there. The fiber infrastructure is pooled for all operators likely to be interested in a consumer installation. But that's for theory …

In practice, you will not usually have much choice if you want to subscribe to a fiber offer. In the best case, you can usually choose between two operators, not much more. According to a document prepared by Ariase, SFR-Numericable is the sole operator of 536 municipalities out of 1270 in France. In comparison, Orange is the only operator present in 148 municipalities. Free comes last with only 27 cities in which he is the sole operator.

Change operator is easy?

During our various box badyzes, we tried to change offer on one of the homes that we used as a test. The home in question, located in a small building in the Paris region, has been fiber for three years in FTTH. The work was done by Orange and it is therefore very logically that the operator has moved into the building in question to offer its services. Remember that other ISPs can freely install their small box in the building, and thus leave the choice to customers to change ISPs.
Although everything works perfectly with Orange, we tried to opt for a competing solution using the various online tools offered by Free, SFR and Bouygues. Each tool has returned an end of non-receipt: the place in question is eligible for fiber. We contacted by phone the customer service of each of these ISPs, to know a little more about the reason for this so-called ineligibility, and especially to force an installation. Here again, the same story: impossible to subscribe to fiber, either because of "installation work is in progress" (for 3 years), or because the address is simply not eligible. We were told by one of the ISPs that it was up to the town hall to decide which operator had the right to move into a building. But where is the interoperability so much wanted by the French regulations ?
After multiple searches on the forum and contacts with Internet users, it appears that our case is far from isolated. So whose fault is it? The wrongs may be shared. On one side, there are ISPs who can drag their feet to install their junction box in areas that do not earn enough, market research to support. But on the other, we also discover that some operators may forget to declare to the competition that a home or business is connected to keep the market. Arcep has already called operators back to order and asks them to ensure that interoperability between operators is effective as of 1 September 2018… we are still waiting.

In the end, who offers the best services at the best price?

Before you start, if you have the choice between several operators (which is not often the case, as mentioned above), be careful to take into account the type of connection that you are offered. Between "optical fiber" and "optical fiber + coaxial termination", the bit rates are not at all the same, both in download and upload. The rising rate is also an element to consider in some cases: if you are a player, if you want to build your own FTP server or host your website, or if you are used to cloud services like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.
If you wish to have an offer at a attractive price, turn to the side of the formula proposed by the Bbox Miami from Bouygues, or Free and its Freebox Mini 4K. Note that we have not yet been able to test the brand new box of the offer Bouygues Ultym, whose TV part is dedicated to 4K and offers a downlink of up to 1 GB. We will not miss the do so very soon and we will deliver our findings at the next update of this article.
If you are looking for Comprehensive TV services, efficient service, and constant throughput (up to 1 Gb / s), take into consideration the offer Orange Fiber Jet. More expensive than those we just mentioned, it should meet all your expectations in terms of reliability and stability (we are talking about connection here). In terms of power, all the boxes are worth today. The Orange Livebox in its v4 is the most interesting if you are looking for a device capable of decoding an external 4K video stream without experiencing any slowdown. But other box boxes are not left behind, especially with SFR's box of 4K THD which proves rather stable in the long run (more than the Livebox that tends to crash when you launch Netflix, for example).
All this while waiting for Free to come out new Freebox, of course, which should throw a big block in the fed up …
Finally, note that all operators offer promotional offers without ceases to significantly reduce the bill the first year of subscription (40% on average). However, you will have to commit to 12 months to enjoy, a rule established by all suppliers.

Summary: all fiber offers

Bouygues

Free

Orange

SFR