Free: the possibility of sabotage behind the general outage in the Gers
La Dépêche, October 12, 2022 (extract)

A major network failure has affected hundreds of homes in the Gers since Tuesday, October 11. Customers of the operator Free are victims of a service interruption following a potential act of vandalism on a fiber optic cable, located in the town of Blagnac (31). Neither calls nor access to Internet have been possible for more than 24 hours. From Auch to Vic-Fezensac through Lectoure or Monblanc, the area affected by the incident extends over almost the entire department and beyond. Some communes in Haute-Garonne and Tarn-et-Garonne are also affected by a network failure.

Technicians were mobilized from Tuesday afternoon to identify the origin of the failure. It was in the town of L’Isle-Jourdain, using an optical reflectometer (a device to determine the integrity of a fiber optic cable) that the source of the incident was detected … 35 km away, in the neighboring department. In the early afternoon of Wednesday, a Free technician was reviewing one of the fiber installations on one of the splitters in the town of Auch, [when] one of his colleagues told him the news: the operator’s equipment had been the target of an act of vandalism. The latter also specified that the incident was detected at the level of an access ramp to the A621 freeway in the commune of Blagnac.

An intervention required pulling a 1,500 meters long cable near the ring road. According to Free’s technician, the act was committed by qualified people, because the cable had been cut in two places.

Professionals impacted

Many of the operator’s customers have reported this outage. Among them, many professionals are paying for this incident. No Internet access, electronic payment terminals out of order etc.. Conditions that also create difficulties in schools like the Pardailhan high school. Noting absences, updating timetables or sending emails via the school’s intranet becomes impossible without internet. “We do everything by phone, we write notes”, says the school administration.

But it is especially in the medical sector that the situation can become complicated for practitioners using the Free network. In the office of Dr. Khater, a dentist in Auch, appointments can only be made in person since Tuesday. For the consultation fees, it is not even worth thinking about using a bank card, the payment terminal, connected to the Internet, being out of order. “People pay by check, cash or leave it for the next time […] I hope they will understand”, says the office.

via:sansnom Translated by act for freedom now!