During the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, several major fiber optic cables were severed, causing outages or network slowdowns for several operators. The Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O indicated in a tweet that “cable cuts have been confirmed in Île de France impacting the fixed and mobile network” and indicated that the state services were in contact with the affected operators.
The cause of these various fiber optic cuts is currently unclear, but the concentration of cuts over a short time range does not suggest coincidence or clumsiness on the part of a network operator.
The impact of these various cuts was notably recorded by the British organization Netblocks, which lists the interruptions and disturbances of the Internet network. Its recordings indicate a complete loss of connectivity on part of the infrastructure of Free and SFR during the night.
⚠️ Confirmed: Real-time network data show regional disruptions to internet connectivity in #France on multiple providers leaving users in parts of the country offline; the incident is being attributed by operators and authorities to acts of sabotage on fiber infrastructure ? pic.twitter.com/potipn9Z5w
—NetBlocks (@netblocks) April 27, 2022
The b2b operator Netalis also communicated on the incident from the first findings: “the generic incident is a first for Netalis in 7 years of operation of our network. Two long-distance cables from different operators are cut several hundred kilometers apart,” the company explained during the night. The company indicated that it had implemented “an emergency link of sufficient capacity” which enabled it to return to a return to the operation of its services around 11:30 a.m. The company says it is still monitoring the incident and promises a full return to normal shortly.
The access provider Free indicated for its part that it had observed “multiple acts of malicious acts on infra fiber during the night and in the morning. According to the first images published by Free, the cables targeted were buried cables, difficult to access. Most of the incidents seem to have taken place during the night, between three o’clock and five o’clock in the morning, sometimes “a few minutes apart” according to communications from Netalis.
— Free 1337 (@Free_1337) April 27, 2022
The cuts notably affected fiber cables linking Paris and the Ile de France to other major cities in the country, notably Lyon and Strasbourg. These cables are operated by SFR, which shares them with Bouygues and Free.