Paris (AFP)

The malfunction of the emergency numbers system at the beginning of June, during which several suspicious deaths occurred, is not the consequence of "an underinvestment" on the part of Orange or of a problem on "the copper network ", defended the CEO of the operator Stéphane Richard Wednesday at the National Assembly.

"It is not a problem of under-investment on the part of Orange, it is not linked to the copper network, it is linked to a pre-existing software bug" on equipment "installed in 2016", explained Stéphane Richard in front of the deputies of the Economic Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, who auditioned him on Wednesday.

The "software bug - which had not manifested itself until then - occurred at the time of a reconnection order (...) during an operation to modernize and extend the network for cope with the increase in traffic that we have observed throughout 2020 "detailed Stéphane Richard.

On June 2 at the end of the day, numbers 15, 17, 18 and 112 were for many French people inaccessible or reachable only after multiple attempts, a breakdown which has unprecedentedly affected the entire territory.

To date, five suspicious deaths have been observed in Morbihan, Haute-Saône, Vendée, Reunion Island, and Bouches-du-Rhône, during this blackout.

According to the findings of the Orange survey published on June 11, 11,800 calls, or 11% of the total, were not routed during the blackout on June 2, between 4:45 p.m. and midnight.

This malfunction "is the consequence of a bug in the software of the + calls servers +", that is to say the technical equipment which manages the interconnection between the IP network and the old analog network, the investigation indicated. Orange, which also rules out a cyberattack.

For its CEO, "this incident is not linked to an under-investment but to an investment. All the messages on the obsolescence of the network are irrelevant," he insisted on Wednesday.

The leader of the operator nevertheless admitted to the deputies "weaknesses" in the crisis communication from his group when the blackout occurred.

On June 2, "the technical mobilization was immediate" but "the activation of crisis units, and in particular managerial units, was too slow," said Mr. Richard.

The triggering time of these cells "will go from 2 hours to 30 minutes", as recommended by the internal investigation of Orange, he recalled.

© 2021 AFP