Storm Ciaran seriously damaged infrastructure in western France, depriving many homes of electricity, Internet and mobile networks. Arcep offers a map to measure the extent of the damage.

Storm Ciaran seriously damaged infrastructure in western France, depriving many homes of electricity, Internet and mobile networks. Arcep offers a map to measure the extent of the damage.

Storm Ciaran and its exceptional wind gusts of up to more than 170 km/h caused a lot of damage in its path, both human and material. The electricity networks in the west of the country were particularly affected due to trees falling on the lines, pylons or cables being torn out. In some places, “the network has been chopped”explains to the Express the president of Enedis, Marianne Laigneau. Result: more than 1.2 million homes were deprived of electricity and communications were locally interrupted. Many relay antennas from Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile found themselves out of service, mainly due to the loss of power supply. According to Jean-Noël Barrot, the Minister Delegate in charge of the Digital Transition and Telecommunications, more than a million people were without a mobile network on November 2. A number that gradually decreases as power is restored. And so as not to remain without information in this type of extreme situation, the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Press Distribution (Arcep) offers on its website a map of the state of mobile networks giving an idea of ​​the extent of the damage. A permanent map, updated regularly, but which takes on its full meaning in this type of disaster.

Arcep map: mobile networks hit hard by the storm

As its name suggests, the Arcep map reflects the state of mobile networks at a given moment. It indicates the sites which are encountering difficulties, whether the mobile radiotelephony service (voice and SMS) or the very high speed mobile access service (4G). The four major operators, namely Orange, Bouygues Telecom, Free and SFR – they are represented by a color code – are required to update this information. To see the damage caused by Storm Ciaran, simply compare the number of points between October 28 and November 3 – you can choose the date to display at the top right. We can also note that SFR and Free were particularly affected. The latter included Free this morning with no less than 460 mobile sites out of working order on Thursday morning, including 147 sites in Finistère, and no less than 60,000 landline subscribers also no longer had service. This is most certainly due to poles which broke during the night and which at the same time tore out the telephone lines, whether copper or fiber.

Please note, not all of the sites that appear on the map were affected by the storm. Some are inactive because of a trivial breakdown or due to maintenance. Others simply offer degraded transmission quality. Moreover, by clicking on a point, the map indicates the state of the installation. We can thus see that the mobile network usually experiences some problems in Île-de-France, but the multiplication of incidents on the west coast, mainly in Brittany, results from the passage of Ciaran. It will certainly be necessary to wait several days before telecoms connections return to normal.