French mobile networks Orange, SFR, and Bouygues hit by major outage

A widespread national network outage affected millions of mobile subscribers in France on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. The disruption impacted major operators including Orange, SFR, and Bouygues Telecom, as well as their subsidiaries such as Sosh and RedbySFR. Service interruptions, which included loss of calls, SMS, and mobile internet, lasted from approximately 11:30 to 21:00.

Preliminary reports suggest the outage was caused by a technical malfunction rather than a cyberattack. Specifically, sources indicate the issue stemmed from a failed migration or service launch of a new 5G core network infrastructure. While some websites also experienced downtime due to unrelated PHP coding issues, the telecommunications failure was centered on the mobile network cores.

In response, Orange issued an apology to its customers. Regarding compensation, Orange announced it would double the data allowance for affected subscribers, though some customers reported receiving partial refunds after contacting customer service. However, legal terms in service contracts may limit automatic compensation, as some providers only commit to service restoration within two business days of a reported issue.