In several departments, Tuesday January 17, 15, 18 or 112 were unreachable for several tens of minutes. A breakdown affected emergency telephone numbers in the afternoon across France, telecommunications operator Orange told Agence France-Presse (AFP); about six out of ten calls were blocked.
First, the operator announced on Twitter shortly before 4:30 p.m. that the “landline and mobile calls to emergency services” were “very disturbed”. Three quarters of an hour later, he specified: “Emergency number routing has been operational again since 4:45 p.m..”
The routing of emergency numbers has been operational again since 4:45 p.m. Reinforced vigilance is put in place… https://t.co/Q2qzMDmVgC
Contacted by AFP, the company explained that these « fortes perturbations » had touched “many departments” pendant “about an hour”with only 40% of calls to emergency services going through. “The analysis of the causes of the breakdown is in progress”assured Orange.
A previous outage in 2021
At the end of the afternoon, the Ministry of the Interior announced that a “twenty departments” were concerned, specifying that his services remained “very vigilant about operational recovery everywhere in France. »
⚠️ Some #emergency call centers 15-18-112 are having trouble receiving calls. Everything is set… https://t.co/Pr4NnzglEf
On June 2, 2021 at the end of the day, a breakdown had hit numbers 15, 17, 18 and 112, affecting the whole territory in an unprecedented way. According to the conclusions of the Orange survey published a few days later, 11,800 calls (or 11% of the total) had not been routed during this outage, between 4:45 p.m. and midnight. Several deaths possibly related to this breakdown occurred during this period.
This failure was due to “a software bug” on equipment “installed in 2016”had then explained Stéphane Richard, chairman and CEO of Orange at the time, auditioned at the National Assembly.