French customers of Orange, and its low-cost subsidiary Sosh, reported network problems on Wednesday affecting mobile calls, text messages and internet connections.
The outage began in the late morning, with reports of problems surging on Downdetector, a website that tracks service disruptions. More than 6,000 reports had been recorded between 11.20am and midday, according to French media reports.
Orange confirmed on X that its mobile network was experiencing disruption. The company also told French media outlet Actu.fr that a nationwide incident was severely affecting calls, SMS messages and mobile internet services.
“Our technical teams are fully mobilised to identify the cause of the incident and restore services as quickly as possible,” the operator said.
Some users began reporting a gradual return of service around lunchtime, but the disruption had not been resolved for everyone. At around 1pm, approximately 10,000 people were still reporting problems.
What should Orange and Sosh customers do?
If mobile calls are not working but Wi-Fi is available, enabling Wi-Fi calling may allow customers to make and receive calls. Those without a fixed internet connection can try using a mobile hotspot from another operator, if available.
Orange experienced another major disruption in late June when a technical incident affected some of its mobile services. Fibre internet customers were not affected by that outage.
The cause of Wednesday's nationwide incident had not yet been confirmed at the time of publication.