2023: growth on every front
Over the last four years, ielo has achieved continuous annual growth of 33%, making it one of the most dynamic players in the digital infrastructure sector. These positive results were driven by the continued support of its 400 active operator customers, who were joined in 2023 by 60 new national and international players.
As a neutral infrastructure operator, ielo’s model is based on the design and operation of its own national network, the deployment of which required the mobilisation of significant capital and the involvement of ielo’s teams. Since 2020, ielo has increased the size of its metropolitan network tenfold and created its own national long-distance network. These homogeneous, very high-capacity networks provide a unique end-to-end quality of service and a competitive advantage for its operator partners.
In 2023, ielo continued to gain ground and by the beginning of 2024 had:
A 16,000 km metropolitan fibre network to be as close as possible to end-customer sites
An 11,000 km long-distance network to transport the data of its partners and their customers from one end of France to the other
2023: the year of industrialisation
In order to improve its performance and accelerate its rollouts, ielo has concentrated its efforts on industrialising its processes, particularly with regard to the delivery of links and the densification of its backbone network.
With 350 employees (of which 250 are field technicians), ielo has been able to significantly increase its operational capacity to overcome the challenges of its growth.
2023 was also marked by the creation of a dedicated customer support team to guarantee a high quality end-to-end service.
Finally, 2023 saw the integration of the Quantic Telecom team into ielo. Having stopped the expansion of its direct sales of digital services in order to adopt ielo’s “pure wholesale” model, the team in Rouen completes the operator’s presence in Normandy.
Heading into 2024 with ever-higher speeds and FTTO guarantees
Unlike traditional fibre networks based on a shared, mass-market architecture (FTTH), ielo has focused on designing and deploying its own dedicated local loop fibre optic network. ielo’s FTTO offering is supported by an end-to-end infrastructure that is 100% dedicated to businesses and local authorities. This gives them the guarantees they need to run their digital businesses smoothly, through reliable, ultra-high-speed infrastructure.
In 2023, more than 2/3 of the requests transmitted by ielo’s partners achieved a guaranteed speed of at least 100Mb/s, compared with only 1/3 in 2022. All came with a 4-hour Guaranteed Recovery Time.
These figures reflect the growing need among businesses for ever-higher speeds and guarantees tailored to their requirements. In order to keep up with this growing demand, ielo rolled out its FTTO collection service in 2023, with guaranteed speeds of up to 10Gb/s throughout the country.
The first quarter of 2024 will see the launch of a new range of FTTO solutions. This new stage in ielo’s development will enable the company to continue democratising FTTO throughout France and provide a technology that is perfectly tailored to businesses’ reliability and performance needs. This will be possible thanks to a neutral infrastructure base controlled by ielo’s teams from start to finish.
Arthur FERNANDEZ, CEO of ielo, commented: “Our results are the fruit of our teams’ commitment and the trust placed in us by our partners. They embody our promise: to be and remain the only neutral infrastructure operator in order to boost the business telecoms market in France over the long term. Since we are not dependent on any French telecoms group, we are able to keep this promise to our partners, with whom we are working in close collaboration to accelerate the digitisation of businesses in France. With this is mind, we intend to continue developing our service offering to help them increase the opportunities for switching to fibre at a time when the copper network is being phased out.”
About ielo
ielo is an independent French telecoms infrastructure operator specialising in very high-speed fibre optic networks, providing a high-quality solution to the needs of the business and local authority markets.
Now operating in more than 3,300 municipalities, ielo offers a network dedicated to the uses of the business customers of its operator partners and assists local authorities in rolling out their own networks to support their public service missions. ielo’s next-generation infrastructure is designed, deployed and maintained internally to offer the highest level of availability. In 2023, ielo had 350 employees, including 250 technicians, working in 12 Regional Technical Centres to provide a consistent, controlled quality of service.
Press contacts
Stéphanie Lefebvre – slefebvre@aromates.fr
Cynthia Trulès – cynthia.trules@ielo.net