PARIS (Reuters) -Orange, France’s biggest telecoms operator, said on Friday that a software failure caused the network outage that affected calls to French emergency services for several hours last week, according to an internal inquiry.
Orange’s internal investigators found that the emergency calls, which rely on a platform of servers responsible for dispatching the calls, were severely disturbed because of a bug in the call server software.
Orange’s voice services and access to some emergency services were most impacted between 1445 GMT and 2200 GMT on June 2, Orange said, putting lives at risk and putting the group’s chief executive Stephane Richard under the spot.
The cause of the bug itself stemmed from an upgrade started in early May to increase the network’s capacity, Orange said.
Orange’s investigators also underlined the late communication of the incident to authorities and emergency services, due to a delay in setting up an internal crisis unit.
The Paris-based group said the software failure had been identified and solved by its equipment supplier, which it did not name.
Orange reiterated that the glitch was not caused by a cyberattack.
(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain, editing by Louise Heavens)
