Orange mobile network outage hits France

A major technical incident caused a nationwide mobile network outage for Orange and its subsidiary Sosh in France on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. The disruption, which began around 11:20 a.m., severely affected mobile calls, SMS, and mobile internet services for both individual and business customers across various regions, including Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse.

Reports on platforms like Downdetector surged quickly, with some estimates reaching over 12,000 complaints by midday. While mobile services were heavily impacted, emergency calls remained functional, and fixed fiber internet connections appeared largely unaffected.

Orange later confirmed that the outage was caused by a failure in its mobile core network. Reports suggest the incident stemmed from a failed migration of subscribers to a new 5G core network. The operator announced that services were fully restored by late evening, though technical teams remained mobilized to monitor network stability.