During the breakdown, only 40% of the calls were successful and “for the others, it was necessary to call back”, specified the telecom operator Orange.
Several emergency numbers were affected by breakdowns in certain French departments on Tuesday 17 January. Telecom operator Orange has announced that “fixed and mobile calls to emergency services (15,18,112)“had been disrupted everywhere in France from 3 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon. The routing of emergency numbers was finally operational again from 4:45 p.m.
The difficulties lasted between 30 minutes and an hour and remain unexplained for the time being. “We have no evidence that points to hacking.“Simply declared Tuesday on franceinfo the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior Camille Chaize.
A total of 19 departments were affected according to a radio census: Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Vienne, Haute-Savoie, Landes, Drôme, Seine-Maritime, Loire, Lot-et-Garonne , Saône-et-Loire, Var, Nièvre, Seine-et-Marne, Loire-Atlantique, Sarthe, Meuse, Orne, Eure-et-Loir, Vienne, Deux- Sevres.
60% of disrupted calls
During the outage, only 40% of the calls were successful and “for the others, it was necessary to remind”, said the operator. Despite the restoration, however, Orange’s services remain “vigilant” and apologized for the inconvenience caused. The French telecommunications company is now conducting analyzes to try to understand the origin of the failure.
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At the end of the afternoon, the Ministry of the Interior had specified that a “twenty departments” were concerned. “The services of the Ministry of the Interior remain very vigilant on operational restoration everywhere in France”, we added from the same source. Civil security recommended that the French keep themselves informed of the situation “via the accounts of the prefectures and SDIS” who gave instructions to follow.
On June 2, 2021 at the end of the day, an outage had hit numbers 15, 17, 18 and 112, affecting the whole territory in an unprecedented way. According to the conclusions of the Orange survey published a few days later, 11,800 calls, or 11% of the total, had not been routed during this outage, between 4:45 p.m. and midnight. Several deaths possibly related to this breakdown occurred during this period. This failure was due to “a software bug” on equipment “installed in 2016”had then explained Stéphane Richard, CEO of Orange at the time, auditioned before the National Assembly.