Orange CEO says Nokia software bug caused France network outage

France network outage puts Nokia under scrutiny as EU pushes to phase out Huawei, ZTE gear

A software bug in Nokia’s code was at the core of a mobile network outage that affected Orange, France’s biggest telecoms provider, according to Orange France CEO Jerome Henique.

The flaw was new to Orange and “extremely complicated to find”, Henique told French newspaper Le Figaro.

What happened in France

The problem first hit Orange’s network at 11.37am on Monday and lasted until 8.30pm. Some customers faced outages of up to nine hours, Henique said.

The incident has raised questions about the reliability of products made by Nokia, the Finnish telecoms equipment giant. It also involves one of Europe’s two main telecoms equipment suppliers, adding to a debate over network resilience and vendor diversity.

Why the outage matters

The disruption comes as the European Union continues efforts to phase out Chinese suppliers Huawei Technologies and ZTE over security concerns. That policy backdrop has increased attention on the reliability and resilience of other major suppliers used in European telecoms networks.

The French outage therefore feeds into a broader discussion about how network operators manage supplier choices and service continuity. The source does not indicate how many customers were affected overall, but it says outages lasted up to nine hours for some customers.

Source: South China Morning Post