General Information
Location: Pau and surrounding area, southwest France.
Population: The total population of the area is approximately 140,000.
Network owner: Agglomération of Pau-Pyrénées.

In those days, fiber to the home (FTTH) was in its infancy, with little groundwork laid by other projects used as a template. Not only were there no clear guidelines for project planners, but there was also little understanding at the subscriber level of what high-speed broadband technology could offer. The dot-com crash was still fresh in people's minds, and public faith in the power of the internet to transform lives was at a low point.

Undeterred, the authorities in Pau-Pyrénées began work in 2003, and the network was launched two years later in 2005, based on Active Ethernet running over fiber optics. By 2007, 42,000 households were connected, although only 5,000 active subscribers had been registered.

The perception began to grow that a large investment had been made in a network that only a minority of people really wanted, and which was far less than necessary. The services envisioned by network planners, such as video on demand, video surveillance, high-definition TV, online data backups, clean data centers, grid computing, and the idea that applications could be hosted remotely, were implemented, but they were unfamiliar, and people weren't ready for them.

Implementation
Network Size: 51,000 homes connected, 9,000 homes connected (as of summer 2010).
Technology/Architecture: Active Ethernet implemented over fiber.
Implementation Timeline: Pre-planning in 2001, project started in 2003, completed and commissioned in 2005.

Efforts to communicate the potential benefits of the network and explain how FTTH technology differs radically from broadband alternatives have been slow. A lack of competition among service providers, and the resulting underspending on marketing and developing new services, doesn't help matters. The pioneering Pau-Pyrénées project began to develop a poor image, and its credibility was called into question.

A change in fortunes.
Three years later, the fortunes of the FTTH rollout in Pau-Pyrénées have taken a dramatic turn for the better. The initial target of connecting 55,000 homes out of a possible 70,000 has been surpassed, reaching almost 51,000.

More than 9,000 of those households have signed up, as well as 350 locally based businesses, and interest is clearly increasing.

The impact on the local economy and quality of life is no longer in doubt. Since 2005, more than 800 new jobs have been created thanks to the economic boost provided by FTTH. The region has become very attractive for businesses to locate there, build new offices, or establish data centers. In particular, the Pau Cité Multimedia is being built to attract companies focused on ICT.
“It’s difficult to measure the network’s true impact, but we expect that ultimately, around 1,600 new jobs will be created in these areas,” says Martine Lignières-Cassou, President of the Pau-Pyrénées Agglomeration Community.

Business Case
Investment: Project cost €14.8 million (divided into €6 million for the Pau-Pyrénées agglomeration, €7.7 million from the ERDF, and €1.1 million from the Aquitaine Region). The average cost per connected household is less than €300.
Owner: Pau-Pyrénées owns the network.
Operator: Axione operates the network, responsible for design, engineering, installation, operation, and maintenance, with services sold through ISPs such as SFR-Cegetel and Heliantis. It is now opening the network to competing telecommunications companies, in accordance with ARCEP (the French telecommunications regulatory authority), to support future network development in less densely populated rural areas.

The University of Pau has developed digital channels for the benefit of students, 1,450 of whom will soon be directly connected to the internet via fiber optic broadband links. The prestigious Ecole Internationale des Sciences du Traitement de l'Information (EISTI) now has a campus in Pau, built to take advantage of high-speed connectivity.

End-user services
Cost: A 70 Mbps connection with triple-play services costs €34.9 per month.
A number of businesses also benefit from the high upload and download speeds, as do public sector services, such as uploading medical images on a shared network used by several hospitals and clinics.

Residents who subscribe to FTTH are enthusiastically enjoying the good high-speed connections to services like VoIP, IPTV, VOD, and online photo development. These services have begun to filter into the mainstream consumer market and now seem far less unattainable than they did in 2005 when the rollout began. Businesses, meanwhile, benefit from better connectivity than they would find even in a large city, allowing them to decentralize and relocate jobs to the region. Small businesses are able to achieve a more global reach with their products and services. The future now looks bright, with a whole new generation of services soon to become a reality—online gaming and virtual worlds, telemedicine, distance learning, and global e-commerce.

“Ours remains a pioneering project, and many other communities are already taking our experience into account,” says Lignières-Cassou. “They want to avoid problems and learn about techniques, such as deployment in urban areas and the coordination of several municipalities. Pau was not only a technological challenge, but above all a social and economic one.”

She states that the organization is currently working on defining a service offering for the passive network: “We are also developing the active component to maximize the potential of fiber optics, leveraging our competitive advantage through the deployment of innovative services,” she adds. “Our responsibility now is to consolidate the network, strengthen the ICT pipeline, and share our expertise with local authorities and public sector partners who wish to take advantage of very high-speed broadband.”

Author:

FTTH Council Europe

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