Numerous Internet cables were cut in France on the night from Sunday to Monday. According to The Register, this led to communications disruptions across the country. Local law enforcement officials say there are “limited impacts” on internet connections and landline and mobile phone lines. Major French telecom operators suffered. According to one of them, such an attack could only be carried out with “an ax or disc grinders” (like “grinders”).
According to Bloomberg, cable infrastructure is disrupted in at least nine departments (Ardèche, Aude, Bouches-du-Rhône, Drome, Hérault, Marne, Meuse, Oise, Vaucluse), both in the north and south of the country along the Mediterranean coast. The functionality of the networks is already being restored, and traffic was temporarily allowed to flow through backup channels, which could lead to a drop in communication speed for some users, including cloud services of French operators like OVHCloud.
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Statistics from Zone ADSL&Fibre show that the problems began around 02:00 local time on July 29. The network of the Free operator was hit the hardest, while SFR and Bouygues users reported fewer problems. It seems that the results of the sabotage have not been completely eliminated. However, the network of Orange, the main operator of the Olympic Games, was practically unaffected.
It is unlikely that this is a coincidence with another incident last Friday, when the French national railway network SNCF suffered from attacks on cables transmitting information to train operators, including those related to traffic safety. However, the authorities are not talking about a direct connection between attacks on railway infrastructure and fiber-optic communication lines, although both of them could affect the ongoing Olympic Games in Paris.