Orange announced that calls to emergency numbers (15,18 and 112) had to be “repeated” following “disturbances” on the network. The breakdown would have been repaired, warned the operator.
The operator warned that “disturbances” had caused difficulties in reaching emergency numbers on January 17, Orange “apologized for the inconvenience caused” via Twitter and indicated that “emergency number routing is operational again”.
However, still on the social network, the operator announced a few minutes earlier that the SAMU, the fire brigade or the European call number could not be reached. “Landline and mobile calls to the emergency services (15, 18, 112) are severely disrupted everywhere in France. We invite people who wish to contact the emergency services to repeat their calls” announced the French operator. In a second tweet, the company warned that “all Orange teams are fully mobilized to restore services as soon as possible.”
A dozen departments are affected by these disruptions warned France 3. As indicated by the media In Eure-et-Loir, “random routing failures“were identified by calling 18, 112 and 15. Difficulties were also noted in Loir-et-Cher by calling 18 and 112. In total ten departments would be affected, confirmed the Ministry of Interior.
1/ Failure of emergency call numbers 18 – 112 – 15
If you have difficulty reaching an emergency service:
– Repeat your call
– Call from another landline or landline.– Prefect of Eure-et-Loir (@Prefet28) January 17, 2023
A previous outage in June 2021
For the moment, Orange has not communicated on the extent of the disturbances and their origins. However, this is not the first time that the operator has experienced a breakdown on its network impacting emergency calls. On June 2, 2021, a breakdown affected the entire territory for several hours, many users were unable to contact the emergency numbers including 15, 17 and 18. The equipment malfunction was caused by manipulation of the operator causing a technical bug.