Legal information

Orange offers mobile services and guarantees optimal quality. Orange has set up procedures to measure and shape traffic, to prevent a network connection from becoming saturated or overloaded. In accordance with article 113§5 of the law of 13 June 2005 on electronic communications, Orange publishes information on how those procedures could have an impact on service quality. Orange is taking the following measures: To guarantee the best possible customer experience and optimal quality of both voice and data calls, Orange has set up a number of procedures and dashboards to monitor the quality and capacity of its network. Technical experts monitor the network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Proactive procedures have been introduced in order to anticipate or avoid the smallest incidents and to prevent network congestion. All technical devices in the network send performance measurements. Thresholds are defined that initiate proactive actions to improve and increase the capacity of the network. The objective is to act swiftly even before the quality deteriorates. Regarding speech and data capacity:

• Each month, sizing calculations are performed based on the traffic that goes over the network and on the expected increase in traffic. The Orange RCE platform (Radio Capacity Extension) examines the traffic and the trends, analyses congestion and decides what actions should be taken. Thus, for example, radio capacity can be increased by adding radio equipment, or the bandwidth of our transmission lines can be augmented.
• The capacity is monitored daily. When a threshold is exceeded, action is taken in order to increase the capacity of a cell, of several cells or of a network node.

If, despite this preemptive work, an incident should still occur on the network, teams are ready to restore the service and increase the capacity of the network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The main objective of our operational experts is to fix any incident as swiftly as possible to limit the impact on the services provided to our clients (like speech, connection with the Internet or with mailboxes) to a minimum. Examples of temporary measures we can take: since mobile Internet (skyping, listening to music via streaming, watching videos and films …) uses significant capacity, Orange can in a first instance block or limit access to mobile Internet, with as objective to preserve enough capacity to be able to call the emergency services and to send text messages. Then each incident is analysed thoroughly and in detail: we start looking for the source of the incident so that we can take the appropriate measures to avoid such incidents in the future. During major events such as summer festivals (Werchter, Tomorrowland, Dour, Couleur Café ...) and sporting events (football, the Memorial Ivo Van Damme, cyclocross events ...), Orange reinforces its network by building temporary sites and increasing the capacity of existing sites. This way, Orange can deliver a positive customer experience.

The performance measurements and the quality of the Orange network are evaluated every six months by an independent organisation (Commsquare). These benchmarks provide us with an objective picture of the customer experience regarding our performance and the network, and give us the necessary information to make targeted improvements.