The Department of Haute-Garonne is in the process of achieving a tour de force. Fiber installer in four years in 548 municipalities, for 500,000 Haut-Garonnais. Fiber propels Internet data at the speed of light, and allows multiple devices to be connected simultaneously: television, smartphones, game consoles, without loss of speed. At a time of the development of teleworking, it is more and more in demand.

Available in the depths of Comminges or Lauragais, as in the center of Toulouse, the fiber will make it possible to put the territories “on an equal footing”, as Georges Méric underlined. “In Toulouse Métropole and in certain towns (Ramonville, Muret and Plaisance), private operators are negotiated. In rural areas, considered unprofitable, we have decided to intervene,” explains the president of the departmental council.

After two and a half years of work, half of the 300,000 households are eligible in rural and peri-urban areas. The whole will be fiberized in 2022.

Every day, new municipalities are becoming potential. That is to say, you can contact any operator (Orange, Bouygues, SFR, Free and others) to subscribe to an offer. To find out if your home can be connected, you can go to the site of Fiber 31, the company responsible for installing the fiber network, on “fiber31.fr“, as well as on the site of Arcep, the national regulator of the sector (see box).

“Please note, the connection to your home is free, it is paid for by the Department”, warns Victor Denouvion, president of Haute-Garonne Numérique, the mixed union in charge of fiber development. He warns of “certain abusive canvassing operators, who demand payment for the connection”. In addition, underlines the president, no operator has a monopoly, so you can choose the one which suits you best, and compare the offers.

“No one is obliged to subscribe to a fiber offer, and everyone is free to keep their line and therefore their current ADSL offer (often 10 to 15 € cheaper than a fiber offer, Editor’s note). At the end of the decade, optical fiber will gradually replace the copper telephone network, through which ADSL passes, “recalls Victor Denouvion.

The deployment of fiber does not follow a “north-south” or “east-west” logic in the department, and does not depend on the size of your municipality. The deployment program map is also available on the “fiber 31.frThe fiber generally passes through the existing telephone poles. After signing your subscription, the access provider must connect you, within a maximum of 8 weeks.