In the Central African Republic, a fire broke out on the evening of Sunday, June 6, at the operator’s premises and robbed its subscribers of telephone and internet. It should take at least days, if not weeks, to restore the services.
as reported from Bangui, Carol Valade
From Orange data center, radio installations and the network core there is nothing left. Nothing but charred rubbish. Civil protection is streamed with the lance, under the command of Lieutenant Tandjo and the strained eyes of the employees, helpless, “I panicked. I told myself, this is serious and when I came in it was a disaster. Everything was lit, black and burnt. There is nothing left … To put everything back together, it will be really hot, ”states Dieumerci Junior Pingulus.
In the middle of the still smoking debris, there is a pile of black cables or dented servers. “The fire caused havoc and destroyed most of the equipment. The entire Orange network in Central Africa is out of order, emphasizes Régis Delière, head of Orange Central Africa. It is gigantic costs and years of work to build such equipment. So renewing all this costs a lot of money. I hope to be able to report better news in the coming days.
No date for resumption of service is announced. The evaluations are ongoing. The telephone operator claims 830,000 subscribers in the country. The fire occurred just over a month after the person who hit the French embassy’s premises in Bangui, a fire also of unintentional origin, according to available information.
We can not serve our customers right now. […/…] Everything has been destroyed, it takes an expert’s eye to be able to determine what was the source, in the beginning, of the fire’s departure, the nature of this departure. Is it an electric nature? Is it a chemical nature? Is there an internal nature in the system or is it possibly an external type that could have triggered this? At the moment impossible to say.
Régis Delière, CEO of Orange Centrafrique.
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