To choose the right operator, it is better to be sure that its network is working properly. ZoneADSL has identified all the outages that occurred in 2022 for both fixed Internet and mobile telephony. And the results are quite instructive…
The choice of an operator, whether for the Internet or for mobile telephony, is particularly tricky. Indeed, many criteria must be taken into account, such as the price of the package, the bonuses included, but also the quality of calls, SMS exchanges, video streaming, or even the frequency of breakdowns. The Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Press Distribution (Arcep) unveiled the results of the 23e edition of its annual survey on the quality of mobile operator services. Orange was once again first, followed by Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile and finally, last but not least, SFR.
But a good quality of transmission and an important coverage of the territory are nothing if the network is down! More often than not, it’s a simple technical issue that’s resolved within minutes, sometimes hours. Nothing to make a drama out of it. On the other hand, if it happens often, it’s a whole different story… To find out which of the four French operators is the most reliable, ZoneADSLwhich has a tool for reporting incidents on the Internet and mobile networks, has listed all the outages that occurred in 2022.
List of failures: Orange in the lead, Free dead last
Network outages, whether for mobile or Internet, are often caused by severe weather that damages network antennas, such as a snowstorm or high temperatures. It can also be acts of vandalism such as cutting cables or stealing equipment. It also happens that work is carried out in municipalities, which can inadvertently cause temporary network outages in the sector.
ZoneADSL recorded less than 800,000 reports in 2022. It appears that the fiber network has, regardless of the operator, always more breakdowns than the ADSL and mobile networks – which can be explained by the fact that, when one antenna has a technical problem, another is able to take over until the problem is resolved. By comparing the reports for each operator, two of them particularly stand out, for good and for bad. Thus, Orange is the big winner with only 11% of reports from the platform, followed by Bouygues Telecom and its 18%. Red card, on the other hand, for Free Mobile with 36% of ZoneADSL reports, which makes it narrowly miss the third place occupied by SFR with a rate of 34%.
Free Mobile is also awarded the prize for the biggest outage of the year with 9,703 reports for a single event, namely the sabotage of part of the operator’s network last April. Finally, the most affected department is the North with no less than 37,305 reports recorded over the whole of 2022. At the time of writing these lines, there were 493 mobile antennas in trouble throughout France, all operators combined, including 204 at Free, 123 at Bouygues Telecom, 91 at SFR and 78 at Orange. On the Internet side, there were 2,102 outages in progress, the majority concerning, without much surprise, Free and SFR.