The scene is unfortunately banal. We are in March 2020, Covid has started to shut down the entire planet. Luxembourg, as many other countries, is invited to stay at home. Imagine family X, tenants of a flat in the heart of the capital, discover with horror the new pleasures of sharing a connection. The father works in communications and is mostly on video conferences; the mother must sometimes download heavy images and the two children are typical teenagers … always surfing the internet. When they moved in, the fibre was not available and although the couple took steps to increase their connection speed by at least 25 times, they are stuck with… ADSL. The daily e-drama is real.
The telecommunication operators, however, assure us in their press releases and advertisements that the country is well connected. “In reality,” says MyConnectivity CEO , “the cable coverage rate is at 90% and the fibre coverage rate is at 76%. In total, 95% of the country is covered with either one of them, with only 60% of households benefiting.”
We need to get all the players to talk to each other and convince the population of the value of having an excellent connection.
The problem is, the Prime Minister, (DP) has set a target of 100% by 2025. How can we get as close as possible to this within three years? “We need to get all the players to talk to each other, to have the right statistics to assess the situation and to convince the population of the importance of having an excellent connection, considering the technological progress,” explains Ms Knudson.
80,000 buildings without vertical cabling
The problem is far more complex than subscribing to a service. The first issue is vertical cabling, as 80,000 buildings are not wired. When owners are not obsessed with installing photovoltaic panels or charging stations for electric cars, they do not want to bear the costs of this connection. “We are going to invite people to talk to each other, whether they are electricians, heads of condominium associations or architect-engineers, not only so that they are aware of the importance of integrating the connection as an asset of the future building, but also to present them with a catalogue of technical solutions that we will produce to make life easier for everyone,” says the CEO of MyConnectivity.
The second difficulty is how to convince households that do not have a broadband connection of the added value of a broadband offer. “As an EIG, we are neutral. We are not at the beck and call of a telecom operator or even of a technology. We are here to ensure that tomorrow, in view of technological developments, everyone has the right connection. All of us. Even those who are not familiar with technology.”
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Only who already has an offer and who does not? Nobody in Luxembourg knows. Surprising as it may seem, Statec talks about the number of households and businesses, ILR about subscriptions and Post, for example, about “units”, according to Ms Knudson. And no operator wants to have its market data shared with competitors. The EIG could therefore play the role of data centraliser… and protector of this same data, without which nothing will move forward.
Unreadable offers despite efforts
The ILR has had a hard time comparing connection offers: its latest edition, covering 91 offers (!), shows differences of €29 for the cheapest offer of the 12 categories to €159.13 for the most expensive, with 28 promotional operations offering discounts of 0.8 to 34.9%. A normal human being understands an insurance contract better than . The ideal would be to have a “double entry” tool, with users ticking boxes according to their uses, to be able to estimate their need for connectivity, including according to their budget, and to be able to give them the ideal offer or offers at the end.
Another subtlety in the figures: if Luxembourg has 269,000 households and 243,600 fixed Internet subscriptions, what about the other 25,400 households? The elderly? Nomads? Those who are resistant to all technology, which we saw most often after the birth of the petition against 5G? Households with incomes too low for connectivity to be an issue?
According to , the ILR’s tool, the measurements, 98,000 per year on average since the tool’s launch, fell to 59,065 from May 2021 to June 2022, 40% less than in the previous years, two Covid years when family competition for a good connection was intense. And still, a link should be drawn between site visits (16,900 over the period) and measurements (59,065): each visitor makes more than three measurements. While the ILR calls for these measurements to be taken for what they are--measurements of people who have doubts about the quality of their connection--the idea that the average is 128Mbps is good news. Especially since 85% of the measurements are made on fixed connections.
Letz connect tour in four municipalities
If the issue of households is problematic, the issue of businesses is even more so, because it automatically doubles as the problem of cybersecurity, continuity of services in the event of a cyberattack and the protection of each company’s data.
Here again, MyConnectivity has a role to play in “evangelising” the importance of having a good connection in a rapidly digitalising world. This is the idea behind the official launch of its activities at the Luxembourg Internet Days, on 14 and 15 November, at the Chamber of Commerce, where the EIG will unveil a strategy around these issues, which includes a “Letz connect tour”, of four events, in Echternach, Mersch, Dudelange and Luxembourg, on 28-29 November and 12-13 December.
“Getting everyone to talk to each other, training each other, testing things” is a fine ambition for Géraldine Knudson and “her” EIG with a budget of 1.2 to 1.5 million euros per year on this strategic issue of access to a state-of-the-art connection. She will be talking about all these aspects at the of Commerce.
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This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.