Orange: faced with the theft of copper cables, the operator takes out the snitches


Faced with the proliferation of copper cable thefts in Brittany and Pays de la Loire, two Orange managers have developed an effective method to find the criminals: install snitches on the cables. In a year and a half, five teams of cable thieves have been arrested and brought to justice.

Credit: 123RF

Even though Orange has confirmed the death of ADSL and the end of its copper network by 2030, that still leaves many years for cable thieves to rob the operator and drive subscribers crazy. In Brittany and Pays de la Loire, copper cable thefts exploded in 2022.

According to the new regional director of Orange in Pays de la Loire Véronique Fontaine, no less than 74 malicious acts on the operator’s network were recorded last year. “If we look at everything that was stolen from us in 2022, it’s the distance between Nantes and Angers, or 440 tonnes of copper. However, when we know that copper is traded around 8 euros per kilo, in the end that figure”, she explained to the antenna of France Bleu Loire Océan.

Also to read : Bouygues Telecom claims 78 million euros from Orange for breakdowns on the ADSL network

Orange teams up with snitches to find the thieves

To curb this scourge, two “Incident Managers” (ed.: position consisting of ensuring the centralisation, effectiveness and efficiency of the incident management process) from Orange based in Morbihan have found the solution. At the beginning of 2021, they obtain the agreement of their hierarchy to buy cookies as well as various systems that they diverted from their use. “Here, a shutter opening system, there a GPS, etc. We started deploying our own bugs in October. The first thieves fell in stride,” ensure the two responsible.

You would have understood it, the idea was to be able to track stolen portions of cables. “In general, the sections between two access points measure 300 m. This represents a weight of between 500 kg and 1200 kg (and a value currently oscillating between 4,000 and 10,000 €, half less for resale on the illegal network), easily concealed in a simple van”. detail the two Orange employees.

Since the installation of these cookies on the cable reels, five teams of thieves were arrested and brought to justice. “We have a national supervision that comes to monitor our network. As soon as we have a suspicion of theft of cables, it makes it possible to trigger the gendarmes to go and check”, add the two technicians. Either way, the method pays off. For 15 days, Orange teams have not reported any theft of cables in the region.

Source: Telegram



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