Resilience: Orange Wholesale adapts to climate change

Climate change is no longer a hypothesis, but a reality to which we must adapt. At Orange Wholesale, we are fully aware of our key role in managing climate crises and ensuring the continuity of essential services.

Our infrastructures have always complied with the most rigorous standards. Even if they have been designed to resist, our regular maintenance plans allow us to anticipate, and we go even further to meet our responsibilities

Telecommunications: a pillar of critical infrastructures

Extreme weather events highlight the importance of telecommunications networks. Telecom operators are on the front line, helping to coordinate rescue operations, keep critical infrastructures running and maintain economic activity. Without connectivity, first responders cannot intervene effectively, and critical infrastructures such as electricity and transport cannot function optimally.

The University of California's Disaster Research Center estimates that 70% of emergency responses depends on real-time communications. In France, 85% of critical infrastructures - energy, transport, emergency services - rely on telecoms networks, according to ANSSI. Finally, a major service interruption could result in economic losses of up to 2 billion euros per event, according to the Institut Montaigne.

These figures illustrate our responsibility: to guarantee the resilience of our infrastructure in order to limit the impact of climatic crises and adapt our business to climate change. Our historic technical redundancy will underpin this: there will always be a back-up route!

A methodical approach to anticipate and act

At Orange Wholesale, we have adopted a rigorous methodology to strengthen the resilience of our networks:

1. Analizing climatic risks : We assess the exposure of each point of presence (mobile stations, data centers, subsea cable landing stations) to climatic hazards such as floods, fires or heat waves.

2. Assessing vulnerabilities : We identify the most sensitive infrastructures and analyze their ability to withstand climatic events, based on their technical characteristics, access, energy supply and the readiness of our human resources to intervene in quickly and safely.

These analyses enable us to constantly prioritize our actions and deploy targeted adaptation plans if necessary. 

Concrete adaptation plans

The main sources of service discontinuity are well identified, and we have implemented appropriate solutions:

• Infrastructure design and maintenance plan: 40% of interruptions are caused by climatic events¹. We integrate these risks into our maintenance plans and carry out reinforcement work, such as burying cables or adding cooling systems.
   
• Anticipating power supply disruptions: 30% of outages are due to power cuts¹. We work with energy suppliers to anticipate load shedding and deploy emergency generators and batteries.
   
• Network modernization: During crises, traffic can increase by 200%¹. We are constantly upgrading our equipment to increase capacity and supervise networks in real time to optimize traffic routing.
   
• Modeling infrastructure access difficulties: 20% of interruptions are due to hazardous conditions¹. We train our teams, use drones to access difficult areas and pre-position strategic equipment.

A collective ambition for sustainable resilience

Since 2024, we have integrated climate resilience at the heart of our processes, in an “ESG by design” approach. Our ambition is to co-construct this resilience with our stakeholders:

• Train our employees and subcontractors to limit human risks.
   
• Share our climate risk analyses to help our customers and public authorities draw up their own resilience plans.
   
• Collaborate with specialized players to identify technological innovations and new business models.

Investing in resilient networks, according to McKinsey & company, not only reduces downtime by 30%, but also improves customer satisfaction by 20% and attracts new customers through a reputation for reliability.

At Orange Wholesale, we are convinced that this quest for resilience strengthens our industrial credibility and our role as a key player in telecommunications. While respecting our ambition to be Net Zero Carbon by 2040, we are committed to building collective resilience to meet tomorrow's climate challenges.

^*1 Source : GSMA