Telephone customers encountered telephone problems on October 19. Calls from SFR to Orange and Sosh lines were unsuccessful and gave the impression that the number had not been assigned. It is now resolved.

Things are back to normal between Orange and SFR. Telephone calls, which were unable to pass from one operator to another on the morning of Tuesday, October 19, are again possible. This is what the incumbent operator said in a message posted on Twitter at the start of the afternoon. However, some mobile users could still have occasional problems.

“The incident that disrupted certain communications is over. Traffic has returned to normal and we remain vigilant. Orange renews its apologies to customers who have been impacted,” wrote Orange. An hour earlier, the company, after admitting the existence of a concern, indicated on the same Twitter account that its teams were on hand to restore calls from SFR to Orange.

Numerama was able to directly observe the restoration of the service with the editorial staff's own numbers. A colleague with a mobile number at SFR made a phone call to two numbers, one at Orange, the other at Sosh (which is the low-cost subsidiary of the incumbent operator), without worry. This morning, it was not possible: we had received a message stating that the numbers were not allocated.

It was in the middle of the morning that social networks began to buzz with rumors about difficulties in routing calls between SFR and Orange. Several messages on Twitter bear witness to this. A similar observation could be made at Humanoid, the company that publishes Numerama. However, the problem was relatively contained: not all operators were affected.

“Who has Orange for mobile calls? A priori a breakdown, many subscribers are no longer reachable: 'the requested number is no longer assigned'”, testified Elsa on Twitter. She specified that she had contacted customer service, which had at that time confirmed to her a “general breakdown” being processed. In response to his message, other Internet users had reported a similar concern.

On DownDetector, a site dedicated to listing outages, a peak of reports concerning Orange began to emerge shortly after 10 a.m. and then peaked around 11:30 a.m. A decrease was then observed. In all, hundreds of notifications were sent to the platform. A similar observation could be made for the pages dedicated to SFR and Sosh.

Concerns for SFR customers wanting to call Orange numbers

The problem affected both landlines and mobile numbers. More specifically, it arose during calls from SFR and, more rarely, during calls from landlines to Orange mobile lines. A collaborator at Humanoid had been able to join the assistance of Sosh and obtain additional explanations on the nature of the problem.

“It is following portability, SFR blocks calls received from its lines to your number”, was it explained. Relaunched to find out if it only affected SFR, the interlocutor confirmed: “It is a blockage during portability, at the level of the inter-operator cell.” On social networks, Orange began to communicate about the incident, via an account dedicated to after-sales service, before reporting it more widely via its main account.

Portability refers to a mechanism that allows you to keep your mobile phone number when changing operator. It is a procedure which is now well anchored in the landscape of mobile telephony in France and which avoids having to renew its 06 (or 07) as soon as one wants to play the competition. Without portability, the market would be frozen. Or hellish.

Screenshot of SFR's after-sales service on October 19, 2021

Screenshot of SFR's after-sales service on October 19, 2021