Since the middle of the afternoon of Tuesday May 30, Orange subscribers have had difficulty making or receiving calls from their mobile phones due to a breakdown in the network of the leading French telecom operator. “Calls via the Orange mobile network in France are currently disrupted”recognized the group in a tweet published at 5:15 p.m., without specifying the origin of the failure.
“The disturbances are not homogeneous throughout the territory, some regions are more affected than others”says a spokesperson for the operator. “The teams are fully mobilized to restore services and apologize for the inconvenience caused”adds Orange, which specifies that“Investigations are underway to determine the origin of this incident”.
Only calls are affected by this failure. Fixed telephony and mobile Internet services are fully functional, the operator explains, allowing subscribers to use a service like WhatsApp to call or send messages.
The group recommends calling 112 in case of an emergency
However, this failure is not without consequences for calls to emergency numbers. The operator acknowledges that a “limited impact may disrupt calls to emergency numbers (15, 17, 18)”. “In the event of an emergency, the group recommends joining 112, which is functioning nominally”calls being given priority and going through the available networks.
This incident awakens the fear of the great breakdown of emergency numbers in 2021. On June 2 and 3, between 4:45 p.m. and midnight, numbers 15, 17, 18 and 112 had been inaccessible or reachable only after multiple attempts, throughout the territory. 11% of calls could not be routed due to a software malfunction. Five suspicious deaths had been noted, the relief could not be prevented in time.
Following this outage, the government subjected the operator to a “control of the security and integrity of its network”. The report, submitted on July 19, 2021had advocated a series of recommendations to the operator and the sector.