Our Orange Internet "en panne" since Monday 26th

Bizarrely we still have our land line telephone, but no Orange internet in the house but we do have internet down in the gite/cottage.

This is what they are saying - unhelpfully!
Vos services sont impactés par un incident sur notre réseau.
L’intervention technique programmée n’a pas permis la réparation complète de la panne le mardi 27 octobre 2020 en fin de journée . Nos équipes sont mobilisées pour rétablir vos services dans les meilleurs délais. La nouvelle date de réparation sera publiée sur cette page dès qu’elle sera connue.

Anyone else been affected? Anyone know what’s going on?

Did you had a storm in your area? It could be possible that a thunderstorm hit your line and fried the equipment, unless you have a charger protector in front of your internet modem.

@Annie2 Thanks for the thought Annie, but as the message from Orange explains, this is an “incident” and has been France wide. Orange are just being very coy about what the problem is and when it will be put right. Last Tuesday came and went (the original promised date for putting it right) and there’s no evidence of an end in sight.

I suspect those on here who have been affected are not online. I’m managing because we have the cottage and I’m on a laptop. Just not very convenient for checking bank a/c etc as I don’t have the cookies / pin numbers etc set up. Also missing netflix.

A farmer took in our area an orange pole down and after 3 weeks it is still down. At least in Calvados they take there sweet time to fix the line.

The nationwide outage was due to a fibre trunk being ripped up by accident at Clamart railway station near Paris, which also happens to be near to Orange’s routing centre in Issy-les-Moulineaux. This created a domino effect throughout France as Orange struggled to reroute communications through secondary routes.

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@RicePudding Oh, thanks so much for letting me know Alex. I wish they were honest on their own website and in their communications to us. It is much easier to be accepting of a situation when one understand why. We still have no internet in the house and no indication when we will have it back. Thank heavens for the gite! So strange though that two properties on the same land, one has been affected, the other not.

When all else fails, reboot the router ? The main problems were supposed to have been fixed by 31/10, so it is a bit strange that you still haven’t got any connection. Other than that, I’d guess you’d have to take your chances with Orange’s phone helpline…

To see whether anyone else has reported issues in your neighbourhood, you can always check out

Despite the overall message indicating that there are no problems, the map of France with red/orange blobs on it tells another story!

@RicePudding Thanks for the thought. Not fixed. There’s a message now on the orange “en panne” site which says we should be back on line by end of tomorrow. Here’s hoping.

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Further frustration. Orange “en panne” site says it’s fixed. We’ve rebooted the livebox and it’s still flashing red. So “helpline” here we come! Oh lord!

Sorry to hear about your troubles! Perhaps just take the live now dead box to the orange store and ask for a new Livebox!

Had a similar problem last year when lightening too out regional Orange internet. Our box was disconnected during the storm so knew the live box was ok and as you say the phone was still working and giving out the messages you describe. The date came and went when it was supposed to fixed and still no connection. I rang Orange again and was told all was fixed so they sent an engineer out and also confirmed they would not need to visit our home. The service returned within the revised time they gave me.
It seems that they had to tweak a local street box by probably flicking a switch
You need to ring Orange, again.
Hope this makes sense as I haven’t read it back to check.
Good luck

Not a dead live box @Annie2

@JohnBoy Like you John, know all within the house ok. This is a knock on effect to what happened in Paris last week.
Tried 3900 yesterday. The computer went through the process of checking the line. At the end of the 2 minutes apologised and said that the automatic line checker was not functioning and that I would be put through to a technician and so I waited and then the computer said thank you for using Orange, goodbye!

Fortunately, I discovered that I could test our house livebox online via Orange’s website from the cottage using our portable. That worked very well. The line was checked, I was told there was still a fault and I needed to speak to a technician and I was put through immediately - all of this is made more challenging because we have no mobile phone signal! Anyway, upshot is a technician is coming out tomorrow and the assumption is that it is some fault still on the line between us and their junction box - we’ve been here before and live in hope.

My experience exactly
I think you will be reconnected tomorrow as they advise.

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Joy of joys! Back on line in the house this evening. So catching up with SF topics and discussions, downloading emails and checking bank statements.

By the way, does anyone know please - do we have to notify Orange billing department that we’ve been off-line for 10 days and that we want a refund for those days? Or will that all happen automatically?

It never happens automatically, in my experience. You need to give them a call.

@Mark Thanks Mark

Thanks for the tip. Rang this morning, all confirmed and money to be refunded on next bill.

Yet again our Orange internet has been “en panne” for the last 11 days. We’re told it’s an “incident” and that their “teams” are working on it. Friday the landline went as well. It was supposed to be fixed by lunchtime today. Now the message on their website says they will give an end date when they know it!!!
Anyone know what’s going on please? It helps to know it’s some major fault (like last time). We can be more philosophical.

You never know what it might be, I lost internet and electricity for a good week a couple of years ago because a grape-harvesting machine ripped a load of cables and damaged various junction boxes and uprooted posts and squashed underground stuff so water got in (so a fairly comprehensive destruction job…:pensive:)

We’re fearing that as well! No news any more about when it will be fixed.