France: 24 million online shoppers

3rd February

During the worst crisis in the global economy since 1929, electronic commerce has continued to grow. The turnover posted by online merchants reached 25 billion euros, up 26% in one year. Growth continues at a speed so rampant: the activity has increased tenfold since 2002. Electronic commerce now weighs just over 4% of retail sales (excluding food and pharmaceuticals) paydayloans . And projections are optimistic, according to the Federation of e-commerce and distance selling (Fevad), who presented the results Tuesday, the amount could reach 46 billion by 2012. The increase in 2009 was fueled in particular the creation of 17,000 new commercial sites, two every hour!

The saturation threat hangs over mobile networks

6th January

With the boom of smart phones, networks running at full speed for surfing the Web, connect to social networks, send email, video, SMS … As the family expands again with the arrival of "Nexus One" by Google the networks they might saturation? For with the arrival of these phones and multifunction keys 3G networks face increasing traffic without precedent: it will double from one year to another, according to Frederic Pujol cabinet Idate. At Vodafone, he has been multiplied by four!

Several operators have paid the price, such O2 in Britain, which recognized that the iPhone had saturated its London network in recent months, preventing him from making and receiving calls.AT & T, the United States, has experienced the same situation, which led its director of information services that the iPhone was his worst nightmare!

French mobile operators, trained by the British example, take this seriously. But no doom, all three believe that the situation of French networks, which they invest each year is immune to failure.

Heavy investment

"This is a subject on which we are very vigilant but without real concern, says Jean-Marc Tassetto, general manager marketing and public SFR. On the one hand, we invest each year in our network for sizing, or even 1.4 billion euros this year. Secondly, we propose solutions to our customers to address the increase in traffic. "SFR, which has two million SFR-Neuf box connected via Wi-Fi, opened the Wi-Fi to its mobile subscribers.Secondly, SFR is the "femtocell," these small antennae on the DSL box, which should also help alleviate traffic in mobile networks. Finally, Vodafone has introduced a policy of "good practices" to exclude a few users who clog the network with abuses.

Besides the use of iPhone users stabilizes. "The first customers were using 500 to 600 Megabits per month, today the average is 300 megabits. That makes sense: once you've discovered the applications from the App Store, you return to a more reasonable consumer, "says Jean-Marc Tassetto.

Even finding in Orange and Bouygues Telecom. "Bouygues Telecom has no risk of saturation. We have two times less customers than our competitors and yet a similar network architecture.In the current state of the network Bouygues Telecom can triple its capacity because we did not use any bandwidth. The increase of traffic justifies a posteriori all the investments we have made in our 3G network, "says Emmanuel Forest, deputy CEO at Bouygues Telecom. Know sizing the network to customer needs is just the heart of the business telecom operator. "Anticipating the saturation is what we do since our inception in 1996. Each year we add radio cards needed in the network. The phenomenon is expected, and anticipated no difficulties, neither technical nor financial, "he concludes.

OPEC: maintaining production levels

21st December

The suspense was lifted on the eve of a meeting of oil cartel in Luanda. Abdallah el-Badri, secretary general of the organization, said Monday the consensus between the different member countries. An increase in OPEC production "is not in the radar" for next year, he also said, saying the current price levels were "very comfortable".

"Stocks (…) are a little high," then said Abdullah el-Badri, adding that the cartel, which is not less than 40% of world production, was to "bring them back to reasonable levels."

It has, finally, stressed the importance of meeting production quotas imposed on member countries. In late 2008, OPEC had agreed to remove the oil market 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to stem the collapse in oil prices which had touched $ 30 a barrel.In November, the 11 members bound by quotas (excluding Iraq) pumped 1.6 million bpd more than its official ceiling, according to the International Atomic Energy.