“It’s an attack of unprecedented scale,” says the French Telecoms Federation

“It is an attack of unprecedented scale. All the operators filed a complaint and filed a civil action”, explained Wednesday April 27 on franceinfo Michel Combot, director general of the FFT (French Federation of Telecoms). The fixed and mobile internet network in France was disrupted on Wednesday following cable cuts in several French regions.

franceinfo: Have you ever suffered attacks like these?

Michael Combot: In the case of this Wednesday, it is an almost professional act, there are several coordinated attacks across the country with a few minutes of interval. It is an attack on an unprecedented scale. As these are on long distance cables, this impacts many homes. This comes after more than two years of an upsurge in acts of vandalism, pylons burned, cables severed for which the perpetrators do not incur enough dissuasive sanctions. The challenge is to be able to track down and condemn the perpetrators of these acts.

Will you find them easily?

We do not make public the security means to allow investigators to do their job effectively. Most of the time the perpetrators of these misdeeds are found, thanks in particular to the effective work of the judicial police in collaboration with the operators who provide all the data necessary to find them. These investigations take time and then there is a very important moment to restore the networks and allow subscribers and businesses to regain the full power of their throughput. We have made all the elements available to the police so that the perpetrators can be found. All the operators lodged a complaint and filed a civil action to understand the motivations and secure the networks.

How can you better protect these cables?

There are more than 50,000 pylons in France, nearly 30 million homes and businesses have access to fiber so it is a bit of an illusion to want to protect everything. Networks are resilient and have plenty of redundancy and can be restored fairly quickly. To better protect access to cables, security perimeters can be set up and access to hatches reinforced.