France Telecom-Orange and Bouygues Telecom have entered into a partnership for the deployment of optical fiber networks in France.

As per the agreement , France Telecom-Orange will provide a service for sharing its optical fiber networks in very densely populated areas with Bouygues Telecom for the horizontal network segment leading to the foot of buildings.

In doing so, France Telecom-Orange optimizes its deployment costs by sharing the available resources of its optical fiber networks.

The France Telecom-Orange's deployment program was announced in February 2010, France Telecom-Orange's deployment program. This involves an investment of 2 billion euros through 2015 to bring FTTH optical fiber to 3,600 municipalities.

This will provide coverage for 10 million households by 2015 and 15 million by 2020 (corresponding to 17 million homes), i.e. nearly 60% of all French households.

While this will help Bouygues Telecom to benefit from France Telecom-Orange’s network coverage in very densely populated areas, within the buildings, Bouygues Telecom will have to build its own networks or subscribe to available cable-sharing offers. In this zone, the partnership potentially covers 1.7 million homes.

Apart from this outside very densely populated areas of France, Bouygues Telecom has subscribed to the wholesale cable-sharing offer for the terminal part of France Telecom-Orange's FTTH networks. With this offer, Bouygues Telecom will potentially have access to 8.9 million homes.

France Telecom-Orange has said that the partneship marks a new milestone in the deployment of its networks and of very high-speed broadband in France by complementing the agreements signed with Free and SFR in the second half of 2011.

The agreement reinforces France Telecom-Orange's FTTH deployment goals for France and is testimony to the constructive spirit in which it is cooperating with the other market players.

For local authorities, whom France Telecom-Orange plans to associate with these deployments, the partnership provides an additional guarantee for the coverage of their territory by networks that are open to everyone.