France network outage puts Nokia under scrutiny as EU pushes to phase out Huawei, ZTE gear

A mobile network outage in France this week has raised questions about the reliability of Nokia’s products, amid Europe’s ongoing push to phase out Chinese telecoms equipment providers Huawei and ZTE due to security concerns. The issue began at 11:37am on Monday, affecting Orange, France’s largest telecoms provider, and lasting until 8:30pm.

Orange’s CEO, Jerome Henique, stated that the fault lay in a new software bug in Nokia’s code, which impacted both Orange’s mobile core network and its redundancy equipment. While 4G and 5G services were disrupted, the 3G network remained operational, allowing customers to continue making calls and preventing a total shutdown. The number of affected customers remains unknown, but Orange’s union, CFE-CGC Orange, estimated that 70% of the company’s 22 million mobile lines were impacted.

Orange is seeking millions of euros in compensation from Nokia, likely in the form of discounts on future equipment or services. Nokia declined to comment on the matter. Industry analyst Tommi Saarinen from Helsinki-based research firm Inderes noted that while the financial impact on Nokia may be manageable, the reputational damage could be more significant.

He added that the incident exposed the need for stricter resilience requirements, such as backup systems that cannot fail for the same reasons as the primary systems. The incident also highlights the broader concerns of European telecoms operators regarding the risks of the EU Cybersecurity Act revision (CSA2), which aims to remove equipment from high-risk suppliers like Huawei and ZTE from European networks.

While the outage is unlikely to alter the current vendor landscape in Europe, as operators still have limited alternatives like Nokia or Swedish company Ericsson, Saarinen believes it will likely lead to stricter resilience requirements.