An internal investigation will be carried out by Orange after its massive outage. – Mourad ALLILI / SIPA
After the controversy over its failure, Orange must provide answers. The telephone operator announced Friday that it had launched an “in-depth” internal investigation. The general inspection of the group, “will have to carry out the necessary investigations to identify the precise causes of this incident and to issue recommendations to draw all the necessary lessons”, specifies the group in a press release.
The conclusions of this internal investigation are expected within 7 days. The group hopes to identify the dysfunctions that prevented Wednesday access to emergency numbers throughout France. “In connection with the interministerial crisis unit, we set up a dedicated unit last night to resolve any local malfunctions that may appear,” added the telephone operator. A new interministerial crisis unit will meet in the morning to take stock of the night, in the presence of Prime Minister Jean Castex, said Matignon.
The hypothesis of a cyberattack ruled out
For about seven hours Wednesday evening, from around 4:45 p.m. according to a minister, numbers 15 (Samu), 17 (police), 18 (fire department) and 112 (single European number) were inaccessible or very difficult to reach overall from France, forcing people to call back many times, or to use 10-digit hotlines urgently set up by the authorities.
The Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, castigated the “serious and unacceptable dysfunctions” of this unprecedented event which could be linked to the death of at least four people including a young child, according to a still very provisional assessment. Orange CEO Stéphane Richard presented “his strongest apologies” to those affected.
Asked about the origin of this failure, Stéphane Richard dismissed the hypothesis of a cyberattack, explaining that this incident was “more likely” due to “a software failure in (the) critical network equipment”, that is, that is, platforms responsible for routing calls.