Tag: France

A French community shows that impending next-generation broadband service can improve ADSL service

Article – French language / Langue Française Brittany flag

Montée en débit en ADSL dans la commune de Sibiril en Bretagne | DegroupNews

My Comments

In a lot of rural and peri-urban areas, even ADSL internet service can be substandard as I have witnessed a few times. This is typically aggravated by established telecommunications entities that underinvest in the infrastructure that serves these areas and this infrastructure is not conducive to proper performance for any service based on DSL technologies.

In Brittany, France, the community in Sibril have decided to take action to have their telephony infrastructure improved before the arrival of an impending fibre-based next-generation broadband service. This effort has paid off with the bandwidth for 259 households in  the territory being improved to nearly 20Mbps where it was in the order of 0.5Mbps to 2Mbps. It has made the service fit for IP-based video services  to Full HD specification along with quicker downloading for even large files.

What Orange have done is to install cabinets closer to the affected locations and run fibre-optic cable to these cabinets, in a similar vein to a fibre-to-the-cabinet setup which implements VDSL2 technology. But they have deployed ADSL2 DSLAMs in the cabinets to assure continuity of ADSL2 service with existing Liveboxes. As well, the customers’ telephone cables are routed to the communications cabinet rather than the main telephone exchange.

This technique comes in to its own with country areas that have a village, hamlet or town which services a collection of smaller communities, something that is taking place in a lot of rural areas. It also comes in to its own with country towns that are growing and the telephony infrastructure needs to be re-worked. Here, a telecommunications cabinet could be installed closer to the various communities and it houses DSLAMs and similar “on-ramp” equipment but has enough rackspace to cope with a few large-property subdivisions that increases the number of customers. Then this cabinet is linked back to the main exchange using a fibre-optic connection while the premises’ telephony and ADSL services are terminated at the cabinet.

There is a greater chance of increased communications security for these areas because if there is equipment breakdown or power failure in a particular cabinet, other areas aren’t affected by the failure. This could also lead to the provision of battery backup in those cabinets for the local telephone services with this requiring a reduced energy need.

At least this comes across as a near-term solution to providing real broadband to densely-populated country areas or to cater for country areas that take a different more-dense housing character.

Free launches the Android-driven Freebox Mini in France

Artlcles – French language / Langue Française

Free mise sur sa mini-box | TF1.fr

Free lance la Freebox Mini et un Freebox Player 4K sous Android TV | 01Net.com

Free : Une box plus petite et 4K | Ère Numérique.fr

From the horse’s mouth

Free.fr

Press release (PDF – French language / Langue Française)

My Comments

Freebox Mini press image courtesy of Free.fr

Freebox Mini

Free have launched into the French market the latest triple-play Freebox. This is not to replace the Freebox Révolution but to be offered as a cheaper hardware option for your high-value have-it-all service that they provide. It is based on a simplified design like the other Freebox products yet is designed to be future-ready.

The Freebox Server Mini is considered a highly functional Internet gateway device which can work with ADSL2, VDSL2 or Fibre-to-the-premises Internet services provided by Free. Like other Freebox gateway devices like the Freebox Révolution, it runs the Freebox OS which has a user interface not dissimilar to a QNAP NAS or a new Linux distro’s graphic user interface. The LAN is based on a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and 802.11n N450 three-stream 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. There is the ability to connect audio equipment so it becomes an audio player in the same manner as the Freebox Révolution Server.

If you want to store data to this device, you would need to use an external hard disk that is connected via eSATA or USB 3.0. This allows for it to be a central “data store” for the home network, including recording TV content from the Freebox Player Mini. As well like other Freebox devices, it has a single-line analogue-telephone adaptor along with a femtocell for mobile phones that are connected to Free’s mobile service.

The Freebox Player Mini is the first set-top box issued by a French telco to have the latest expectations. These include an RF remote which is based on Bluetooth 4.0 Smart technology, the ability to supply 4K video via its HDMI output along with the fact that it runs Google’s Android TV operating system. It also makes this set Google Cast ready and able to be a Chromecast box of sorts.

Another bonus that this set-top box has is voice guidance courtesy of a microphone integrated in to the remote control. There is also an SD card slot so you can quickly show your digital pictures straight from your camera’s SD card “film”.

The price for these devices is EUR€29.95 per month if you are setting them up as one of those legendary French “triple-play” services which encompasses phone calls to more than 100 countries, more than 200 TV channels on the TV, Freebox Replay catch-up TV, or full-on “hot-and-cold” running Internet. The Android-based Freebox Player Mini is available for an extra cost of EUR€2 if it is to be an extra set-top box for a Freebox Révolution setup.

What I see of these devices is that there is a willingness for the highly-competitive French Internet-service market to step forward but stick to commonly-known commonly-available standards rather than head off down their own paths.

4 years of the Freebox Révolution benchmark in France

Article

Bilan: la Freebox Révolution a quatre ans | Freenews (French language / Langue Française)

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

Freebox Révolution – 4 years old (à quatre ans)

My Comments

As a consequence of the highly-competitive triple-play communications service market in France, Free had developed one of the “n-boxes” that has a lot more that is expected for this class of carrier-supplied equipment. Now this device, known as the Freebox Révolution, which is available in just about all of France for EUR€29.95 a month as part of a very tasty triple-play pack, has reached its fourth anniversary.

I have given a fair bit of editorial space to the Freebox Révolution including citing it as an example device in an article about setting up for Internet in France. This is due, not just to its exciting Philippe Starck design but due to the increasing amount of functionality that this device has come with and received over the four years. Here, Free kept with a program of frequent firmware updates which weren’t just about fixing up technical problems but were also about adding functionality to these devices, some of which I have drawn attention to on HomeNetworking01.info.

The Freebox Server was more than just a VoIP gateway with DECT base-station and wireless broadband router. Here, it had DSL and fibre support on the WAN side of the equation and a 250Gb NAS. There was even the ability for the unit to be a media player for Apple AirPlay, DLNA or online media, including playing audio content out via integrated speakers or through external active speakers. The LAN side had a four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch along with 2.4Ghz three-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi, but the Freebox Révolution comes with power-supply units that have integrated HomePlug AV-Ethernet bridges. The newer iterations had been upgraded to HomePlug AV500 and the Wi-Fi on newer releases was upgraded to a dual-band dual-radio variety. Let’s not forget that some of the newer variants even came with a Femtocell that provided local mobile-phone coverage for your home as part of Free getting their paws in to a mobile-telephony service.

Firmware upgrades even had the Freebox Server acquire full Apple compatibility along with being a VPN endpoint router and one of these upgrades was fashioned as the “Freebox OS” with an interface very similar to a newer Linux distribution, one of the mobile-platform operating systems or something you would get with one of the newer high-end NAS devices. The server functionalities included UPnP AV / DLNA, Apple Time Machine, iTunes Server and a BitTorrent server, known as a “seedbox”.

The Freebox Player which served as the “décodeur” for the IP-based TV component of the triple-play service was infact a “full-blown” 3D Blu-Ray player, games console and digital-TV tuner. The gaming functionality was part of an app-store that Free operated, which was to the same standard as most smart-TV platforms, if not better. This device was also controlled by a “gyroscopic” remote control which communicated to it via Zigbee RF technology and supported “gesture-driven” operation. Lets not forget that this was a DLNA-capable media player which gained MediaRenderer functionality from a subsequent firmware upgrade. This device also served as an Internet terminal for the TV screen and even had the ability to interact with most online services courtesy of either the Web view or a native-interface “front-end” that came with one of the firmware upgrades or downloaded from the app store. There was a firmware update that give the Freebox Player “Shazam-like” song-identification abilities.

The Freebox Révolution raised the bar when it came to the concept of a premium triple-play “n-box” offer with the competitors offering systems that had very similar functionality and aesthetics. Examples of these include Numéricable’s La Box and the Neufbox Évolution. As well, I had a casual conversation with someone who came out from France and they even mentioned about someone they knew having one of these devices and being impressed with what it could do.

For me, I have viewed the Freebox Révolution as the flag-carrier for the competitive French Internet market because of the way the carriers can add more value to the equipment they supply their customers. In this way, I would place this device alongside the TGV or the Channel Tunnel as a symbol of French technological progress.

Happy Birthday, Bonne Anniversaire, Freebox Révolution!

Four-play service competition intense on both sides of the Channel

Article

Brit mobile firms in FOURPLAY TUSSLE – how very French of them | The Register

My Comments

Same level of competition for quad-play services in France and the UK

Same level of competition for quad-play services in France and the UK

France and the UK have recently become hotbeds for Internet-service competition whether at a pure-play (single-service) level or with packages that integrate landline telephony, fixed broadband Internet and / or multichannel pay TV. Those companies typically are offering this service via a “single-pipe” setup with some of them reselling content and services from competitors who offer it on a wholesale basis if they can’t sell it directly.

This has been due to government telecommunications and competitive-trade authorities enforcing real competition through measures like stopping incumbent operators from selling wholesale service to competitors under unfair terms compared to their retail offerings. As well, in France, it took Free to offer broadband and triple-play packages with increased value at ridiculously-low prices to effectively “shake up” the market and start this level of competition.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 smartphone

The smartphone to be part of cost-effective home telecommunications and pay-TV packages in the UK

Now this is being expanded towards “four-play” or “quadruple-play” services that include mobile telecommunications along with the fixed telephony, “hot and cold running Internet” and pay TV. This is facilitated typically through their own mobile networks or buying mobile telecommunications from an established. typically pure-play, mobile operator on a wholesale basis as a “mobile virtual network”. Some companies may call the mobile broadband service as a distinct service and describe the packages that include this service as “five-play” or “quintuple-play” packages.

Over previous years, France has established an example of a healthy competitive market for this level of telecommunications and entertainment service. This is with all their telcos and broadband operators offering the “boxes” which integrated telephony, broadband and pay TV at some very keen prices, something I have covered regularly on HomeNetworking01.info. But most of these providers either have their own mobile infrastructure over the country or are putting themselves in a position to set up mobile virtual networks that they resell with their packages. An example of this is Free selling mobile telephony to their customers for an extra cost that is effectively “pennies’ worth”.

The way this level of service has come about for a lot of the UK operators is through varying levels of consolidation and business partnerships. A lot of these consolidations and partnerships have been with the companies who offer one or more services that can complement their own service packages to construct the “quad-play” package. But one of the situations that this has led to is for BT who sold off their Cellnet mobile-telephony service to O2 which is part of Spain’s Telefonica company in the 1990s, wanting to buy back the mobile network from this telco to run as the “mobile arm” of their quad-play package.

The directions that this could lead to include the availability of private femtocells that provide local mobile-phone coverage for the customer with the broadband connection serving as a backhaul or “cellular over Wi-Fi” for voice calls on one’s smartphone; TV Everywhere which is about access to the pay-TV packages anywhere in the country with your laptop or mobile device; and integrated landline / mobile telephony setups i.e. to receive calls destined to your landline on your mobile phone for no extra cost or call from home using your mobile phone at home-phone tariffs. As well, multiple-mobile-device Internet service could become very much part of the packages which can cater to those of us who maintain more than one mobile-broadband device like a “Mi-Fi” device.

Even integration of “over-the-top” telephony services like Skype and Viber could become the norm for these service providers by allowing customers to make or take calls through these services via either the mobile or the landline phone for nothing.

Other countries like the USA, Germany or Australia could be highly aware of this level of competition and know how to be prepared when it hits their shores or to know how to encourage it in a viable and sustainable manner.

It doesn’t take long for the French to consider an Android-driven TV décodeur

Articles (French language – Langue Française)

Free: la prochaine Freebox sous ‘Android TV’ | ZDNet.fr

La prochaine Freebox tournera-t-elle sous Android? | DegroupNews

My Comments

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

Another Freebox to be the first Android set-top box

Previously, when Google premiered their Android Wear and Android L operating systems, they also premiered the Android TV operating system which was to be positioned for TV sets and video peripherals. Philips and a few other firms have showcased some TVs that run on this operating system, which can gain access to the Google Play Store, at IFA 2014.

But it didn’t take long for Free, one of France’s main telcos who are trading in a highly competitive marketplace, to put forward a Freebox décodeur (set-top box) that runs on this operating system. They are working on what the next iteration of the Freebox platform, especially when they want a second-tier model to replace the Freebox Crystal platform. They are also facing the prospect of seeing “n-box” devices that are highly capable being tendered by the competitors.

Personally, I would see certain problems appearing before Free’s eyes when it comes to supporting Google’s Play Store. Here, they would heave to support carrier billing with their accounting infrastructure so as to allow customers to buy apps and games for the Freebox décodeur through the Google app store yet have them charged against their Free.fr account. It is something that any carriers would need to support if they want to maintain the same level of integration.

On the other hand, there is the likelihood of it appealing to triple-play operators who don’t necessarily want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to working on the software for a customer-equipment platform. This may only target the set-top box (décodeur) like the Freebox Player but wouldn’t be able to target the gateway device like the Freebox Server. But with software already written for functionality like social media, video conferencing and the like, a company like Free could have people on board with these services with minimal hardware.

France fields an online storage service that is a privacy-focused European alternative

Article (French language / Langue Française)

RKube : le cloud français | Ere Numerique

From the horse’s mouth

RKube

Product Page

My Comments

Map of Europe By User:mjchael by using preliminary work of maix¿? [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

An online cloud storage that the Europeans call their own

The increased discontent in Europe about the NSA  spying on European citizens’ Internet activity has seen less trust in Internet services that are either hosted on American soil or chartered in the USA. This has also been augmented by recent activities where the German government “battened down the hatches” and even gave a CIA station chief located there the “royal order of the boot”.

As well, the French and Swiss worked on their own volume-wide disk encryption software such as VeraCrypt.

Similarly, the European Union recently won a European court case to assure EU citizens the “right to be forgotten” by major US-based search engines while an Austrian-based class action was launched against Facebook on privacy grounds.

Now the French have launched their own “cloud-driven” online storage as a competitor to the US-based online storage services like Dropbox, Box.com, OneDrive and Google Drive. Here, this operator have their servers on French soil and are totally subject to the rule of law in France. They also focus their offers around user privacy according to European norms. They even have the ability for you to create your own security key and implement secure anonymous file transfers.

Flag of France

Totally hosted on French soil

Like most of the online storage services, they offer client-side software for Windows, Macintosh OS X, iOS and Android while offering a simplified Web user experience for those of us who come in from Web browsers.

RKube will offer users a free 5Gb account or access to up to 500Gb for up to €49.90 / month.

But I also wonder who else in Continental Europe will run with online file storage or similar services in response to the loss of faith in American services by Europeans. It also extends to other services like search engines or social networks. Similarly, it could be interesting to know whether people who live outside Europe but are concerned about the privacy or confidentiality of their data could end up purchasing space on these services rather than the American services.

The French campground and caravan park scene is now switched on in new ways

Article (French language / Langue Française)

La fibre optique et la domotique débarquent dans les campings | DegroupNews

My Comments

Travelling is now becoming more of a connected affair with Internet connectivity being considered a valuable amenity wherever you stay. Even the humble campground or caravan park now offers a level of Wi-Fi-based Internet connectivity as a value-added service.

But the French have taken this further with the use of fibre-optic broadband to assure the people who lodge at these facilities have proper high-speed Internet access everywhere. They are typically in a position to do this because that country is fast becoming the poster child for a highly-competitive highly-affordable Internet service. This is in contrast to the typical cost-effective setup with one or a few Wi-Fi access points to cover the campground with Wi-Fi wireless Internet.

Yelloh Village have worked with Covage to achieve this goal and also provide an IPTV service with access to international TV channels.They have also implemented the “smart-home” concept in the bungalows or cabins that are becoming part of what the typical campground or caravan park offers. For example, when a guest leaves their bungalow, the electrical installation and hot water heater shuts down like as expected in a lot of newer hotels.

Some people may think that the idea of using a campground or caravan park for their holidaying needs is a chance to seek a humble cheap holiday but as more of these places equip themselves in a manner similar to a resort, it may become that camping in the wilderness may be the way to have that humble holiday.

Similarly, the goal to see proper rural Internet service can play in to a campground owner’s hands as a way of seeking to provide high-calibre public-access Internet to holidaymakers who are wanting to camp the “connected way”.

HomePlug AV500 now available with newer Freebox Révolution

Article (French language / Langue Française)

De nouveaux Freeplugs à 500 Mbps pour la Freebox Révolution | Freenews.fr

My Comments

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

Freebox Révolution now available wiht HomePlug AV500

The Freebox Révolution is the first wireless modem-router to support software updating to 802.11ac through its latest software update (mise à jour). But both the Freebox Server and Freebox Player came with the “Freeplugs” which are power supplies that integrate a HomePlug AV bridge in their functionality. This is typically to link the Freebox Player in the living room to the Freebox Server in the study or home office.

Both the “Freeplugs” were compliant to the HomePlug AV specification which worked the link at a best-case line speed of 200Mbps. This is although there are many HomePlug AV500 devices that can work the link to 500Mbps and are compliant to the IEEE 1901 specification for powerline local area networks.

Free have raised the game for the Freebox Révolution by delivering newer systems with “Freeplug” power supplies that work to the HomePlug AV500 specification rather than the older HomePlug AV specification. The only problem that I see with this is that customers who own an existing Freebox Révolution can’t easily purchase these adaptors as accessories for their existing setup i.e. they are only available to customers who are upgrading existing equipment or establishing a new installation. Personally, I would recommend that they be sold as aftermarket accessories for existing users.

On the other hand, you could use separate HomePlug AV500 devices to link these boxes while the existing Freeplugs are used simply as power supplies. This could allow you to use a uninterruptable power supply with the Freebox Server to avoid loss of telephony when the power goes down.

At least this is another example of the Freebox Révolution being considered cutting-edge for carrier-supplied consumer-premises equipment especially in an Internet-service market that has healthy competition.

The French to consider giving IPv6 regulatory boost

Article – French language / Langue Française

Laure de la Raudière : une proposition de loi pour accélérer le passage à l’IPv6 | ZDNet France

Activer l’IPv6 (Aide Freebox) – Instructions pour configurer votre service Freebox pour IPv6 (Instructions to set up your Freebox service for IPv6)

My Comments

Freebox Révolution - courtesy Iliad.fr

Freebox Révolution ready for IPv6

It is taking a long time for most people to become aware of IPv6 in their personal computing environment. This is although most regular and mobile operating systems provide for dual-stack and routed IPv6 support, an increasing amount of NAS units, business-grade printers and premium routers are offering dual-stack IPv6 operation and more Websites and Web hosts are moving towards IPv6 dual-stack operation.

It is due to a lot of ISPs not enabling this functionality with most residential and small-business Internet-service offerings and most popularly-priced or carrier-supplied routers not being made “ready for IPv6”. France has taken a few steps already in the IPv6 direction with the likes of Freebox Révolution being ready for this technology.

But they are taking further steps by using the might of the government’s regulatory authority to push for IPv6 to be a standard for Internet service offered there. This has been driven by the reduced pool of public IPv4 IP addresses being available and is a similar step to their switch from analogue to digital TV broadcasting.

It may be the first government-level initiative to bring through the IPv6 technology to the home network but may not be the last. I also see that the government-based effort may be best turned towards promoting the use of IPv6 by French Internet users rather than by legislating it as a service standard. This is because of the frequent product-updating culture that is taking place with the French carriers to assure consumers have a service worth staying on for especially in a competitive market like France.

The French have fielded another alternative to TrueCrypt

Article (French language / Langue Française)

VeraCrypt, une alternative française à TrueCrypt | Le Monde Informatique

From the horse’s mouth

Idrix

VeraCrypt product page

My Comments

TrueCrypt is a source-available encryption engine used primarily in Windows 7 and 8 as part of the BitLocker volume encryption function that the operating systems offer. Lately, further maintenance of this encryption engine had ceased with accusations of the likes of NSA putting pressure on the developers to cease maintaining it.

A few other third-party encryption engines have surfaced from Europe such as the VeraCrypt engine from France and a fork of this engine constructed in Switzerland. This is in response to Europeans having a distrust for “big government” having access to personal data due to being burnt by the Hitler, Mussolini and Franco regimes in the West and the Communist governments in Russia and the East.

Idrix has worked on the French VeraCrypt project which is pitched as being easy to use for small business, non-profit organisations and individual users. Like all encryption software, it doesn’t support the ability to “trans-crypt” i.e. convert an encrypted volume over to another encryption mechanism.

It will be initially issued for the Windows regular-computer platform but a port is being expected soon for the MacOS X (Apple Macintosh) and Linux platforms. As well, it is being made available for free and as open-source software.

But what I see of this is an attempt for European companies to “break through” the US stranglehold that can accompany the computer software scene and for European culture and norms to be respected in this field.