French emergency call centres disrupted by telecom outage
French emergency call centres disrupted by telecom outage
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that some emergency call centres "are having difficulty receiving calls due to a technical problem from the operator". AP PhotoPARIS: France's government said that many emergency call centres for medical services, police and firefighters across the country were unable to be contacted on Wednesday evening due to a telecom maintenance problem. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that some emergency call centres "are having difficulty receiving calls due to a technical problem from the operator". "Everything is being done to resolve these malfunctions as quickly as possible," he tweeted. Health Minister Olivier Veran said the breakdown was "obviously due to a maintenance problem" by French telecoms group Orange. The maintenance carried out "by Orange would have caused fairly random breakdowns, with up to a 30-percent drop in some regions", Veran told the TF1 channel. He added that Orange had said it was "working on it so that it is repaired in the evening". The minister called on "people to go to their prefecture's website to call local numbers". Orange confirmed to AFP that a "technical incident on a router had greatly disrupted VoIP (voice over internet protocol), internet calls in some regions". A source close to the case ruled out any kind of "hacking". Orange apologised for the inconvenience and said its teams had identified the problem and were "fully mobilised to restore services as soon as possible". It urged people to call again, possibly by a mobile phone. Problems were reported across the country from 6 pm, causing havoc for emergency services. Emergency doctor and head of the Samu-Urgences emergency medical services union Francois Braun said "people were unable to access the service, calls were not coming through, others were cut off in the middle of a conversation". He said that almost all of France's departments were affected, adding that calls usually peak around 7 pm. "We don't know what consequences this breakdown will have, it's too early to say," he said.