Law enforcement will now look into the malicious acts that caused a series of physical cuts to long-distance fiber cables on the night of April 26-27. According to AFP, the Paris prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation for ” deterioration of property likely to affect the fundamental interests of the Nation », « interference with an automated data processing system ” and ” conspiracy “. The investigations will be carried out by the internal intelligence service (DGSI) and by the central direction of the judicial police (DCPJ). Monitoring devices would have been put in place to avoid other cuts of this type.
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For its part, the French Telecoms Federation (FFT) indicates that the networks are fully operational again, but that “the repair work on the cables is nevertheless very heavy and is still ongoing”. For the operators, these malicious acts are only the latest in a long series.
“We have been alerting the public authorities for many months to the resurgence of malicious acts on our infrastructures. As mobile phone towers are generally targeted, today’s acts of vandalism on fiber optic networks are unprecedented and totally unacceptable. I strongly condemn these acts of sabotage which cause considerable inconvenience to the businesses and citizens of our country. We reiterate our call to the future Government to intensify the fight and prevention against these acts of vandalism and we call for tougher criminal penalties against their perpetrators,” explained Arthur Dreyfuss, president of the FFT.
Among the operators who have been the most disturbed in this story, there is Free. According to ZoneADSL, more than 10,000 outage reports were reported during the morning of April 27. The cities most affected were Strasbourg, Grenoble, Reims, Dunkirk and Calais. On Twitter, Free posted photos of the severed fibers and indicated that“about 1% of subscribers were impacted”. SFR was also affected by these cuts, but to a lesser extent. Spokespersons for Bouygues Telecom and Orange said they were not concerned.