We have had many emails with the subject named “Panne Orange Mobile”, so we decided to look into this a little more. The emails basically talk about an outage and SIGFOX and here is the latest coverage.

As consumers we rely more and more on our broadband connections or cell phone coverage, and now there is the need for a secondary network after last Friday saw the failure of the Orange network in France where 26 million users, or almost 40 million with the carriers partners such as Free, Virgin, and more were unable to use their mobile phone, tablet or laptop as an article here is reporting.

This included making phone calls, surfing the Internet, sending text messages and emails during the outage that lasted more than twelve hours. This made it more obvious for the need to have access to a secondary network which could take over in the advent of the primary network failing. It would need to be simple to deploy for economic reasons, and also be designed around a totally different technology to prevent incurring the same risk as the primary network.

The SIGFOX network is currently being deployed around the national territory and would be perfect for the situation that has just faced the Orange network. It would also provide a solution in the event of a natural disaster or an attack on civil security, which would supplement the primary network and allow people to send alert messages.

It is primarily dedicated to the Internet of Things and Machine to Machine communications, the network features SIGFOX technology that is compatible with mobile phones. The problems that were faced on Friday are still likely whatever the operator, as networks are complex and designed to handle high speed exchanges in ever tougher conditions. Twenty years ago such a situation would not have happened but now processes and emergency operating modes are based on GSM.

Ludovic Le Moan, President of SIGFOX said that the network could be a solution to a failed primary network, and needs “to be discussed with the relevant authorities in telecommunications”. Le Moan continued by saying that “SIGFOX technology can be a quick and effective response to a problem whose failure potentially destabilizing for the economy is absolutely consistent”.