France’s telecom authority Arcep ruled in favour of Bouygues Telecom in a dispute settlement which opposed the operator to Orange, concerning the refund mechanism used for end-point connection set-up fees in the case of FTTH lines located in high-density population areas. Bouygues successfully argued that the refund mechanism should change, although its proposal for an alternative calculation method failed to convince Arcep.

As requested by Bouygues, the settlement amends the mechanism so that refunds occur when the ‘outgoing’ commercial operator’s line is cancelled, and not when the FTTH connection is taken over by the next commercial operator. The regulator also agreed on the need to change the method used to calculate refunds and ruled that this should be determined by the parties involved on the basis of good faith negotiations.