The telecom operator is about to finish the building of its optical fiber network (80 km over Nice, Sophia and link between this two poles) and can now attack the market of companies.
Competition on optical fiber links within the Alpes-Maritimes. Completel, one of the new telecom operators, has started since the end of last year marketing optical fiber within the department. As the whole loop on the Riviera (80 km of fiber over Nice, Sophia Antipolis and in the link between Sophia and Nice) becomes operational, the offer marketing is intensifying. Several meetings have thus already taken place at the Arénas and in Sophia Antipolis in order to make an offer dedicated not only to big groups but also to SMEs.
Three kilometres left in Sophia
First, what about the building works of the network on the Riviera ? The loop of Nice is finished, as well as the link between Nice and Sophia Antipolis. This link follows the RN7, by Saint-Laurent du Var, Cagnes-sur-mer, Villeuneuve-Loubet, and goes to Sophia from Marineland and goes straight to Biot. This link between two loops of Nice and Sophia is "secured" by fibers rented from Escota, some fibers which go along the A8 highway. In case of provisory breakage on the Completel link, the Escota network takes over.
The last works are under progress on the loop in Sophia (3 km to finish over a loop of some 20 km and the end of works is scheduled for summer). The network in Sophia is already operational since several months, as the first customer is the data-center Navlink linked in November 2000.
Target: authorities and companies of the Net economy
Of course Completel's offer deals with Internet broadband. The operator proposes thus an interconnection between sites situated on the loop on the Riviera or on one of other Completel's loops (Marseilles, Toulouse, Lyon, Paris and now Alsace since the recent takeover of the Alsatian Estel).
Completel is also provider and can propose transfer rates from 100 kilobits/s to 80 megabits/s, with of course progressive tariffs according to the offered transfer rate: for dedicated and guaranteed links, from 2.900 francs per months for a connection of 100 kilobits; around 20.000 francs for 2 megabits/s connection. The offer also deals with traditional telephony. As the operator comes at the customer's, directly with the optical fiber, he can take care of local calls with specific tariffs.
Completel counts already ten big clients such as the CCI which has connected its sites on the Riviera (the Chamber counts around twenty sites between offices, the Ceram, the houses of companies, etc), the city hall of Nice with its whole telecom traffic, the Lenval hospital, Northstream in Sophia. But the business offence on broadband by optical fiber is only beginning. They aim at local authorities, companies which work as a call center or which have a intensive use of Internet and technologies linked to the Web and all the companies which need broadband. And everybody knows that between Nice and Sophia, they are more and more numerous…