Oliphant

Frédéric Patron, Managing Director of Oliphant, designs, builds and supplies visual and digital communication tools for very small businesses and SMEs. The 20-year-old company has four employees and provides a wide range of services – from business cards, to web hosting and VoIP – largely serving customers in the Paris region.

Having been an OVHcloud partner since the early 2000s, Frédéric was selected to pilot our new fibre broadband solutions. In addition to being a loyal partner, he meets a key criterion: he has a customer portfolio of businesses across two areas of the Paris region. Both of these areas have a high population density, with differing amounts of coverage, which OVHcloud is interested in testing as a matter of priority.

To develop its three fibre broadband solutions, OVHcloud uses of its own network, as well as its supplier’s distribution points. At the end of 2018, OVHcloud provided over 6 million FTTH (fibre to the home) connections across 1,248 areas in France.

Oliphant did not take the easy route. In fact, Frédéric decided to fit out a customer who was eligible for fibre broadband, but located in a particularly isolated area. This organisation had originally utilised four ADSL lines to manage its internet access: a wi-fi hotspot, a phone line, and external access to servers.

Not only was the building’s location remote, the DSLAM (DSL access multiplexer) was too. As a result, the bandwidth speeds they were getting were not fast enough:

• Four 8 Mbps lines, for a 32 Mbps download speed.
• Four 0.5 Mbps lines, for a 2 Mbps upload speed.

Considering that a minimum of around 8 Mbps is needed to properly stream a video, the customer’s activity was becoming rather slow. In this specific case, only fibre broadband could resolve the problem.

Before turning to OVHcloud, the customer had already tried two other major internet providers. Unfortunately, these providers needed to undertake civil engineering work before they could lay the required cables.

While the quality of the FTTH network may be the same, regardless of the provider, in this case, only OVHcloud managed to install the cable without needing to carry out any engineering work. Within a month, the customer was able to enjoy their high-speed fibre broadband.

“OVHcloud quickly and efficiently installed the cables, without any engineering works. My customer is very happy, and just so you know, they’re still waiting for updates from the other internet providers!” 

Frédéric Patron, Managing Director of Oliphant

Since then, they have had excellent internet speeds throughout their premises:

• Up to 1,000 Mbps download speed, 31 times the speed of the four ADSL cables.
• Up to 250 Mbps upload speed, 125 times the speed of the four ADSL cables.

The customer could also access an additional solution, tailored to their professional needs: the OVHcloud connect solution.

Although their performance greatly improved with their new setup, Frédéric has advised his customer to keep an ADSL connection as a backup solution. This will ensure that they will always maintain service continuity in the event of an outage. This configuration is recommended as part of the design and installation of a high-availability plan. To help achieve this, OVHcloud’s OverTheBox solution can combine up to eight internet connections.

Thanks to the super-high fibre bandwidth, Oliphant’s customer can now enjoy smooth video conference calls, faster remote access to servers via a VPN (virtual private network), and Wi-Fi hotspot capable of providing a stable connection for seminars with over 200 participants. 

Opting for a fibre internet connection and an ADSL line, rather than four ADSL lines, also resulted in a monthly saving of 36%*. And it continues to enjoy the advantages of working with OVHcloud, such as its own secure network, and fixed IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

In 2019, eight million fibre-optic connections will be made available to businesses and individuals. Once we reach 20 million connections, 100% of the areas with a medium or high population density (i.e. the Île-de-France/Paris areas and other major French cities) will be eligible for these solutions.

* Percentage calculated by adding one ADSL Express connection at €22.99/month and one Fibre Connect at €35.99/month, compared to four ADSL Express connections at €22.99/month (all exclusive of tax).