The cause is unknown so far but emergency calls were also disrupted, for the second time in under two years
An outage on Orange France’s mobile network, which lasted almost five hours yesterday, meant calls could not be made. It lasted from mid-afternoon yesterday until 8.30pm. As mobile broadband was not affected, customers could make calls via apps like WhatsApp.
The operator recommended dialling 112 in an emergency as the number was working normally, but other emergency numbers – 15, 17, 18 – were suffering “limited impact” and Orange gave priority to calls to those numbers on the network.
Orange issued a statement during the outage saying it was “fully mobilised to restore services as soon as possible [translated from French]”.
After restoring service, Orange said it would be monitoring the network with “vigilance” and apologised for the inconvenience.
Echoes of 2021 outage
This has uncomfortable echoes of the outage on 2 and 3 June 2021, when between 4:45 p. and midnight, emergency numbers 15, 17, 18 and 112 right across France were out of action or could only be made to work after multiple attempts.
During that outage, 11% of calls could not be routed due to a software bug that was introduced during an upgrade in May. Five people are thought to have lost their lives because emergency services could not be contacted to prevent their deaths.
After that outage, in a report, led by France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI, investigators highlighted the lack of a specific national oversight by Orange of emergency calls, although it is obliged by law to centralise and route calls to emergency services across the country.
Slow response
Investigators also pointed to the company’s slowness in communicating information at an early stage of the crisis, as well as a lack of technical support to authorities during the crisis.
“It’s clear from the report that there were shortcomings on the part of the company,” France’s then Minister for Digital Affairs, Cedric O, told reporters on a call, stressing that Orange’s handling of the crisis could have been more efficient.
It will be interesting to see what the current Minister for Digital Transition and Telecoms, Jean-Noël Barrot, has to say about this second occurrence beyond tweeting during yesterday’s outings that his Ministry was working with teams at Orange.