Proximus network failure

In the early hours of 5 August, an incident occurred in Luxembourg that could affect vital communications infrastructure. At 5:20am, operator Proximus Luxembourg detected a technical fault in its network switching equipment, causing disruption to some services, including potential difficulties in calling emergency services for some customers. Full restoration of service was achieved by 9:34.

While the 112 (fire and rescue) and 113 (police) services themselves continued to operate smoothly, the potential unavailability of these numbers to Proximus subscribers raised concerns. As a result, a Cyber Risk Assessment Cell (CERC) was immediately convened, comprising key government and technical agencies: HCPN, ILR, CSSF, CTIE, LHC, CGDIS, Police, Intelligence Service, Army, Ministry of Defence and the Proximus operator itself.

After analysing the causes of the failure, the company said that it was a purely technical, hardware problem, completely ruling out a cyberattack. Nevertheless, the very fact that the incident affected potentially critical communications demonstrated the vulnerability of the network infrastructure and the need for redundancy.