For about seven hours on the evening of 2 June, the numbers for the Samu (15), the police (17), the fire brigade (18) and the single European emergency number (112) were virtually inaccessible. Orange, through its CEO Stéphane Richard, had then presented "its deepest apologies". Then, early this morning, on 4 June, the historical operator announced that it had launched an "in-depth" internal investigation.

 

This announcement preceded the meeting of the interministerial crisis unit. "Things are back in order" and "the situation is back under control as I speak", declared Jean Castex at around 9am, at the end of this meeting which he chaired.

"We deplore the victims who may have been caused by this serious incident", confirmed the Prime Minister.

The head of government insisted that "it will be necessary to establish very clearly the cause of the events that occurred and above all the means to ensure that they do not happen again."

 

For the time being, Orange has already launched an in-depth internal investigation. The telephone operator's general inspectorate "will have to carry out the necessary investigations to identify the precise causes of this incident and issue recommendations to draw all the necessary lessons", Orange said.

Conclusions are expected within seven days. "In connection with the interministerial crisis unit, we set up yesterday evening a dedicated unit to resolve any local malfunctions that might appear," added the telephone operator, while "disturbances" still remained on 3 June "in a random manner".

 

When asked about the origin of this breakdown, Stéphane Richard already ruled out the hypothesis of a cyber attack. This incident is "more likely" due to "a software failure in (the) critical network equipment", i.e. the platforms responsible for routing calls.

 

 

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Source : Les Echos