Tag: France

Article – French language

Flashez votre barquette de bœuf et retrouvez son origine

My Comments

The recent meat-substitution scandal in Europe where a significant quantity of processed beef and beef-based “heat-and-eat” products sold in that area were filled out with horsemeat has put the meat industry, especially the beef industry, on edge.

But how is the meat industry going to restore consumer confidence in the beef that they are going to purchase especially from the supermarket?

A group of organisations in France have put their heads together to provide a way of checking the provenance of that tray of beef. This involved a group of beef farmers in the Pyrenees, the Vignasse et Donney software developers and the Auchan supermarket chain. With this project, there would be a database that has information on the provenance of the retail packages of meat available for sale. As well, each tray of that meat has a QR code that represents the link to the database about the meat. This would be read by a platform smartphone that runs the “Boeuf Blond D’’Aquitaine” app that shows up information about the meat package whose QR code is scanned.

It could work in restoring the necessary consumer confidence in the meat but this concerns more the sausages, the “cut-up” beef like minced (ground) beef or stir-fry strips as well as the ready-meal products like bolognese, lasagne and moussaka. Here, a lot of this class of food is prepared by third parties and it could be feasible to “balloon” the beef product with pork, oodles of fat or offal or, at worst, horse. This is more so with cheaper versions of these products; and this scandal was primarily anchored around the mislabelling of the product at various points of the preparation process.

I would see the QR-code labelling program and the provenance database being more effective with the sausages and “cut-up” beef which was prepared through the known chain of production established by the partners such as “on-demand on-site” preparation of these cuts by Auchan for example. Similarly, the DNA could be worked out for the meat and meat products and represented in to a smartphone-readable label that can be used by customers to determine the origin of the meat they are to purchase.

Article – French language

La TV d’Orange débarque sur les Smart TV de Samsung – DegroupNews.com

My Comments

France has become the first country to bring to the mainstream one of the key pillars for Internet-driven TV. This pillar is for an IPTV or single-pipe triple-play provider to allow us to gain access to their Internet-driven TV service without the need for a set-top box to be supplied by them and for this practice to be seen as becoming mainstream.

Here, people who subscribe to the Livebox service provided by France-Télécom (Orange) and own a recent Samsung smart TV view the baseline TV package for their triple-play service just by using the Samsung TV’s remote control.

This will require the user to perform a firmware update through the TV’s menus. You may have to “press the “Menu” button to bring up the “Assistance” option then bring up the “Firmware update” (Mise à jour de logiciel). Then you have to select the “On-line” (En ligne) option to draw down the firmware via the home network. Here, the set will show up the Orange TV options on its Smart-TV menu when you click the “Smart” diamond on the remote. A question that I would have is whether Samsung is intending to roll this out to the Blu-Ray players and home-theatre systems that have the integrated Internet-TV functionality because these devices would be used to “extend” this functionality to cheaper and older TVs.

At the moment, this will yield the baseline channels but Orange want to take this further with their premium, catch-up and on-demand services. As Orange liaise with other smart-TV platforms to roll this method out to the other platforms, this could become a chance to prove to the IPTV scene whether the smart TV can become the control surface for pay-TV. Here, smart-TV integration only works well with broadcaster-developed video-on-demand front-ends or a smattering of “over-the-top” video-on-demand and subscription-video services which aren’t heavily promoted.

In the US, the FCC could place high value on this concept if all the smart-TV vendors come to the party, as a way of “liberating” the American cable-TV subscriber base from the control of the cable-TV companies. Here, this could be facilitated with a broadcast-LAN gateway for cable-broadcast / satellite-broadcast services as well as this interface for selecting broadcast, recorded-broadcast, online and on-demand material.

Who knows what this could mean for IPTV as the increased number of Smart TVs and video peripherals become increasingly available through the retail channel and the home network becomes a mainstream requirement for the average household.

Articles

French wireless carrier lets you call friends through Facebook | Internet & Media – CNET News

Facebook Is Launching A Numberless ‘Social Calling’ Service | Gizmodo

My Comments

The French are at it again with their online technology. Orange (France Télécom) have provided a Facebook-based “social calling” feature as part of their Livebox service for their subscribers.

The service, sold under the marketing name of “Party Call” is not a VoIP service but uses Orange’s mobile and landline voice infrastructure. But how does it exploit Facebook? Instead, it works as a Facebook app for the call management process, using your “Friends” list as the phone book if your Friends have listed their phone numbers, typically their mobile numbers, in to Facebook. Effectively it is as though you don’t have to remember their phone numbers.

I would improve on this through the ability to manage whether you can receive calls made on this setup or not. Here, this could prevent people from “stalking” you with your Facebook identity especially if you have tied a phone number to it.

Similarly, I would like to see a warning if you are calling someone who has an overseas mobile number or is roaming mainly to avoid bill shock for either party. This could be augmented through the the call routed through Skype, Viber or similar over-the-top VoIP services when the caller is roaming or overseas.

Of course, for people who use regular computers or tablets that don’t support cellular voice calling, I would want to be sure whether this function ties in with Orange-supplied telephone equipment like the Livebox and its DECT handsets or whether it simply uses a “softphone” setup that uses a VoIP setup.

It can also relate to issues like highly-strung DECT cordless handsets being able to import Facebook “friend lists” in to their contact lists and, eventually, Facebook turning in to an Internet-driven contact directory.

Article – French language

Mégalis pilotera le très haut débit en Bretagne – DegroupNews.com

My Comments

There is an intent by another company to pass next-generation broadband into Brittany, which is France’s northwest rural region. Some of us might say that this has a few of the holiday homes used by British people up there.

There is a long term goal of having the fibre-optic service pass 1 million Brittany households by 2025 but the main effort in the meantime is to pass 85000 households in 12 towns through the next five years. This Mégalis-driven main effort is to focus on enabling rural Brittany with this kind of access, especially with Carhaix, Ploërmel and Redon being focused on.

This project is driven by publc and private funds with the private funds providing most of the investment in the form of EUR€400 million courtesy of Mégalis. Public funds are in the form of EUR€65.94 million from Brittany’s local governments and the European Union are pitching EUR€22 million via FEDER. This is also part of the Brittany local government’s E-government effort to provide an improved online citizen-government interface to the local people. Some experts say that the main issue is that you would need to put down EUR1.8 million and allocate 25 years of work to make sure that all the 1,642 households and businesses in that region are covered.

The questions that weren’t raised were how there would be assured competitive infrastructure access to this network. This would include whether to a single-fibre setup with common infrastructure or a multi-fibre setup with competing infrastructure. 

What I like of this is that there have been some ambitious goals to work a rural French region in to the idea of next-generation broadband and expose it to the highly-switched-on French Internet scene.

Article – French language

Canal+ prépare une offre triple play – DegroupNews.com (France)

My Comments

Canal+, France’s main pay-TV provider and known for the Engrenages (Spiral) crime drama, now is in on the Internet-service game.

This service will be primarily based around the SFR infrastructure, which means it will be available in areas that are “dégroupée” (fully unbundled) to SFR or have FTTH fibre-optic established by SFR. To understand this for anyone setting up in France, have a look at my feature article about what these terms and requirements are about in this highly-competitive market.

In this keenly-priced market, the prices range from €32.99 / month with 25Mb/s and the typical free landline calls to France and most destinations to €44.99 / month with the LeCube hardware. Expect this to have things like high-definition viewing, Wi-Fi home network and a personal-TV service as well as multi-screen and other features.

This shows that the competitive market can even allow for many service operators to exist using other providers’ infrastructure on a wholesale basis; and many of these operators could exist on such capabilities like content provision.

Article – French language

Les résidences secondaires : sujet de discorde entre SFR et Orange – DegroupNews.com

My Comments

In the USA, some of the carriers who run wireless-broadband service have had to deal with an untested but real market in the form of the multiple-device user. This is where an account holder maintains multiple wireless-broadband devices like a smartphone, tablet or “Mi-Fi” router, Here, they are having to formulate the right plans that encompass multiple devices and have them gain access to larger bandwidth-allowance pools. It will take some time for these plans to be adjusted properly as the “bugs” and customer-service issues are ironed out in order to achieve the right multi-device plan.

But in France, a spat has occurred between SFR and France Télécom (Orange) over another untested but real service class that is facing the telecommunications aind Internet-service industry. This is a service that is provided to a secondary house like a city flat or a holiday house that is lived in on an occasional basis; and is considered important with France with 3 million householders owning such a place that is typically occupied 44 days in a year.

The accusation that is being raised by SFR is that Orange is working in an uncompetitive manner when targeting this market by offering a particular non-committed Internet package for this user class. SFR say that they can’t offer a similar deal because of their wholesale-bandwidth purchasing agreement with Orange.

There is a reality that people who use these properties do use a wireless broadband service due to its suitability to temporary setups and “there-and-then” setup requirements. But there is a desire by the carriers to provide the “full-bore” fixed broadband service, especially as part of a fixed-line telephony or triple-play package to these houses.

This is augmented more so by the desire for the competitive operators needing to pitch to this market and yield a “secondary-home” service that represents high value in a similar vein that is expected across France.

Personally, I would like to see other telecommunications and Internet-service operators that exist outside France looking at the “secondary-residence” user class more seriously and pitch telecommunications and Internet services that mean real value to them. This includes rental plans for services that are occasionally used such as 3-month / 12-month plans, plans that offer value to multiple-location services and, where applicable, services where bandwidth allowances for many locations are pooled to a larger allowance.

This also should encompass homes which are occupied on a seasonal basis like “summer homes” or houses that are let out to other users on a short-term basis. As well, it could encompass home / business setups where a person has a home office but also maintains a shopfront or secondary office for their business and they want the same communications needs replicated at both sites.

Articles – French language

France Télécom va tester le VDSL2 – DegroupNews.com

My comments

Most next-generation broadband deployments in France’s competitive Internet market are either FTTP (fibre-to-the-premises) fibre but Numericable are running with what is called an “FTTLA” fibre-to-the-cabinet setup. This is where the copper run to the customers is a short-run coaxial cable similar to existing cable-modem setups and is based on DOCSIS 3.0 technology.

On the other hand. VDSL2 telephone-line-based technology is successfully used in Germany and the UK for the copper run in fibre-to-the-cabinet setups in those locations. Now France Telecom are intending to try it in the highly-competitive French market for cheaper fibre-copper next-generation setups. This will most likely be used as another method of covering sparsely-populated outer-urban or regional areas where the cost to deploy would be prohibitive for a full-fibre rollout.

The reason they are running with this technology is its ability to provide a “fat pipe” over telephone cable for short runs. For example, as I have seen from the article, an 800m run of telephone cable could yield a download link speed of 25Mb/s on ADSL2 technology, but could yield 100Mb/s for the same distance. Similarly a longer run which could typically achieve a link speed of 1Mbps under ADSL2 could achieve 42Mbps with VDSL2.

As I have already known, these rates are dependent on the line condition between the street cabinet or exchange and the customer’s premises. Of course, this would be delivered under sub-loop unbundling which would be part of the call for a competitive Internet market in France. Similarly, there would have to be competitive access to those street cabinets so that competing Internet providers like Free could run their fibre backbone to the newly-created VDSL2 infrastructure and reach these markets.

Personally, I would like to see any fibre-copper deployment scenarios involving rural properties like farms be looked at so that there is a proof of feasibility for bringing next-generation broadband to the farmhouse door in a reliable manner.