When he appears on the set of the 1pm JT on TF1, Thursday, June 3, the boss of Orange, Stéphane Richard does not lead off. The leader may have already gone through difficult times in his career – from blackout from the mobile network of the French incumbent operator in July 2012 to the legal proceedings in the Tapie case – the pressure weighing on his shoulders at this moment is immense.
The night before, communications leading to the emergency services (SAMU, emergency police, firefighters, etc.) experienced a major failure due to a failure affecting the Orange facilities. Without being able to contact the emergency room quickly, at least three people are believed to have died, authorities said Thursday morning. The situation earned him to be summoned in the morning to the Ministry of the Interior.
On the set of the television channel, Stéphane Richard has no other choice, in the name of Orange, but to “To apologize to the people who are victims of this dysfunction and to our partners [urgentistes] “. “A single call that does not succeed is extremely serious, because it can put a person’s life at risk”, he admits. The manager also admits in this interview that the causes of this failure are still obscure for the engineers of the company.
It all started around 4:45 p.m. the day before. “It was then that we noticed the first disturbances”, explains Fabienne Dulac, at the head of Orange France. At the same time, the emergency services are surprised by the sudden drop in calls reaching them. At a traditionally rush hour, the standards are strangely silent. On the side of the operator, who takes the measure of the crisis, it is incomprehension. Hundreds of technicians are mobilized throughout the night, including those of the equipment manufacturers of the sites which are presumed to be at the origin of these disturbances.
Panic in the health services
The situation is all the more complex to apprehend as the operator is facing disruptions “Random and unpredictable”, explains Fabienne Dulac. This is not a geographically localized incident. And in the affected territories, some appeals reach for help while others go unheeded. “This heterogeneous situation made the failure difficult to apprehend”, admits Mme Lake. Without being able to quickly find the origin of the problem, replacement numbers are put in place to work around it.
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