Nine days after having suffered a major breakdown preventing many calls to emergency numbers – 15 (SAMU), 17 (police), 18 (fire brigade), 112 (single European number) -, the Orange company, responsible for this service, presented the findings of its internal investigation, Friday 11 June.
According to this document, these are “11,800 calls, or 11% of the total calls, [qui] were not sent to the emergency services ” that night. Occurring on June 2 shortly before 5 p.m., the outage was largely brought under control around 2 a.m.
This survey confirms the hypothesis that was favored from the start: ” [Il] this is indeed a software malfunction [qui] focused on the interconnection between mobile voice and voice over IP services on the one hand and those hosted on the switched network (namely the historical telecoms network in France on which most emergency numbers are based). “
“Frustration and helplessness”
Without citing it, Orange blames a partner who supplies it with the equipment allowing this interconnection. For now, the company does not reveal the name. The incumbent operator, on the other hand, refutes any ignition delay to resolve this failure – which the government seemed to blame it at the time of the crisis: “The Orange teams identified the software malfunction immediately (…) and then started the first technical operations, which unfortunately did not allow immediate re-establishment of service ”, explains the management.
Internally, the analysis is not called into question. However, Sébastien Crozier, president of the company’s CFE-CGC, relates the feeling of “Frustration and helplessness” felt by the teams, in the face of what looks like a feeling of failure. The teleworking conditions imposed by the Covid-19 epidemic in particular may have weighed on Orange’s ability to react to this incident.
This report is not going to put out the fire that broke out on June 2. Stéphane Richard, the boss of Orange, is expected, Wednesday, June 16, for a hearing before the Economic Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, whose president, the deputy (La République en Marche, LRM) Roland Lescure, recalls that “The State has very clear specifications vis-à-vis Orange. Obviously, it was not respected ”.
“The account is not there”
Several deputies seem determined to put Orange – of which the State is the largest shareholder (23%) – in front of its responsibilities. Among these, Mounir Mahjoubi (LRM, Paris), the former secretary of state for digital, for whom “The account is not there” with regard to the operator’s explanations. These elected officials have not, for the moment, requested the organization of a parliamentary commission of inquiry.
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