Our network
The strength of a directly owned network
Since 2004, Outremer Telecom has invested over €170 million in developing its own network of local and long distance infrastructures. Owning its own network gives the Group three competitive advantages:
• Technical control over all of its services, ensuring quality
• Innovation, thanks to the flexibility and responsiveness that enable the Group to offer innovative services at a low cost
• Optimisation of costs
Outremer Telecom has undersea fibre optic cable capacity, thus allowing it to cope with the rapid pace of growth in communications and to ensure high service standards at the best possible price.
The general network also consists of long-distance transmission terrestrial infrastructures, including multi-service platforms and voice switches. Like the major national and international operators, Outremer Telecom has its own communications network.
Broadband internet infrastructure
• Outremer Telecom has implemented its own high speed access networks using XDSL and Wimax technology, and therefore has a latest-generation internet infrastructure. This fully secure, ever-evolving network ensures its quality of service and covers all of the French overseas departments.
• The IP backbone offers evolving transportation capacity to accompany the ramp-up of internet/intranet projects, offering an excellent standard of service.
• In order to ensure maximum service availability, the Outremer Telecom network is constructed on the basis of transmission line and equipment redundancy,
thereby ensuring reliability and optimal security and guaranteeing an excellent standard of service.
An ever-evolving network
Outremer Telecom pursues a policy of permanent innovation in terms of network infrastructures in order to be able to offer its subscribers an ever-more efficient service. The Group invests in Broadband services and in 2008 and 2009, in collaboration with ZTE Corporation, replaced all of its mobile equipment and infrastructures in the French West Indies and French Guiana region, offering 3G+ in Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique and Reunion.
The Group's network architecture is the same in all of the various regions in which it operates, allowing it to roll out new services rapidly and operate all of its infrastructures centrally.
The Group intends to continue in this vein in 2011, developing its third-generation networks.
Key stages in the development of the Outremer Telecom network
2010 Extension of long-distance capacity; Roll-out of internet peering and caches in the regions in which it operates in order to strengthen the Broadband Internet infrastructure
2009 Opening of 3G+ networks in Guadeloupe and French Guiana
2008 Roll-out of the 3G+ network in Martinique
Acquisition of 15-year IRU (Indefeasible Rights of Use) contracts for a Broadband cable in Reunion
2007 Acquisition of 15-year IRU contracts for undersea cables in the Caribbean
2006 Roll-out of Mobile networks in Reunion and Mayotte
2005 Roll-out of a Mobile network in the French West Indies
2004 Roll-out of a Mobile network in French Guiana
2003 Roll-out of a Broadband Internet infrastructure
2001 Roll-out of a Dial-up Internet Infrastructure
1999 Roll-out of a long-distance fixed line telephone network
Development of networks and services
2010 was also a year of major technical advances that allowed for significant improvement in the performance and quality of the Group's networks.
Continuation of unbundling
Outremer Telecom has continued with the unbundling of the incumbent operator's lines that it has undertaken since 2004, with average potential for unbundling the incumbent operator's lines of over 75% in the areas in which it operates. Since 2009, the Group has continued to adapt its unbundling network to its subscribers' growing needs for broadband internet access and to the development of its content offering, particularly video content, by linking the main unbundling points with fibre optics.
An effective ADSL connection diagnosis tool
This tool enables the source of any faults to be determined more quickly and the most appropriate corrective measure to be triggered instantly. Incidents are generally resolved in less than a week. The Group also has a tool that pro-actively detects connection losses in order to work on the line and correct the fault before clients even notice.
