• In France, the Téléphone Grave Danger (TGD), ‘serious danger telephone’ in English, is a device aimed at such victims to ensure rapid intervention. This specialised warning device must meet very high standards in terms of reliability and being readily available.
• Orange, which is behind the solution’s design, is leveraging its technical expertise in infrastructure and terminals to meet this challenge.
News outlets reported that on the evening of 6 February 2024 in Noisy-le-Grand, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, a 24-year-old woman activated her TGD, a device designed to protect victims of domestic violence. Her former partner, aged 26, was outside her door, and he was armed. Thanks to the TGD device, the police arrived within minutes.
These are the everyday (and sadly all too common) situations where the TGD helps save many victims each year, the majority women. Rolled out in 2013, the TGD is a device managed by the Service de l’accès au droit et à la justice et de l’aide aux victimes (service for access to the law and justice and for victim assistance) from the French Ministry of Justice. Intended for victims of domestic violence and rape, it provides them with a dedicated terminal for making emergency calls if they are in danger. At the touch of a button, the user is connected to a dedicated 24/7 hotline run by Mondial Assistance/Allianz, which is responsible for handling calls, assessing them and alerting the police if necessary.
Orange is leveraging both its infrastructure and its expertise in managing specialised fleets of terminals to support the TGD solution
The Parquet (French public prosecutor’s office) may allocate this device at any stage during judicial proceedings, always with the consent of the person, in cases of a serious threat to a victim of domestic violence, in the absence of cohabitation between the perpetrator and the victim, either when the perpetrator has been prohibited from contacting the victim or in cases of proven and imminnt danger, if the contact ban could not be issued. The device can also be assigned to a victim of rape. Alongside GPS tracking monitors (called a bracelet anti-rapprochement in France, or anti-approach bracelet), the TGD is an essential prevention and protection tool for victims. More than 6000 TGD terminals are in active use today in France.
The French government has set operational performance, confidentiality and scalability targets for the device’s technical architecture. As holder of the contract since 2014, Orange is leveraging both its infrastructure and its expertise in managing specialised fleets of terminals to support this solution, from design to implementation and monitoring.
Fixed and automated configuration
In terms of hardware, the TGD consists of a Samsung Galaxy XCover 5 rugged smartphone (soon to be the XCover 7 once testing, assessment and adjustments are complete) with the Victoire app installed, from which alarms can be sent out with an SOS button. When the courts receive the device, its configuration is fixed and operated via Knox Configure. This staging solution from partner Samsung is used to prepare and customise terminals remotely, as well as to apply a predefined configuration profile with associated restrictions (such as preventing the use of SD cards) since the TGD is an alert device only. “Compared to other mobile device management tools, Knox Configure ensures that the configuration is deployed automatically”, explains Nicolas Serpollier, Support Unit Agent for the TGD solution. “It means we know that the terminal is set up correctly and has everything it needs to function as intended, without confirmation from the user.” In order to work correctly, the TGD requires the Victoire app to launch every time the phone is turned on or, alternatively, an emergency call to be initiated by the power button being pressed three times. Once the configuration—which remains unchanged after a factory reset—is complete, the device is made available to the relevant individuals.
Geolocation of calls
What happens when someone sends out an alert? On the one hand, a call is automatically triggered and routed to the remote assistants. They can see the victim’s file on their screens along with geolocation of the call using GPS coordinates or, by default, via cell tower triangulation. If necessary, they request a rapid response by law enforcement agents in the knowledge that all TGD calls automatically receive priority routing via Orange networks. On the back-end, meanwhile, technical data received during the alert—such as the phone’s battery level or GPS location—are conveyed to and processed by dedicated Orange servers. This information is stored for 24 hours before being erased.
A service with maximum continuity
In addition to designing and managing the functional architecture underpinning the TGD technical solution, Orange also takes care of the after-sales service. “We are never directly linked to victims’ devices”, clarifies Annie Navarre, Customer Service Manager. “But we may be contacted by victim support associations or the courts in the event of after-sales service incidents. Our teams within the Major Service Center (MSC) IOO (Indian Ocean Operations, including Mauritius and Madagascar) are responsible for handling these incidents from end to end, and for relaying them to internal experts when the problem is complex.”
The goal is optimal availability and the smallest possible impact in the event of malfunctions or adjustments to the software and technical architecture. One major forthcoming development involves “increasing the number of servers, spread throughout the country in different locations, to further improve the availability of the service”, explains Paul Le Bris, TGD Project Manager. “There are also changes in the pipeline related to the web portal interface provided to remote support teams. However, these tweaks remain conservative since the aim is to keep things as simple and ergonomic as possible, and to avoid time-wasting complexities from the user’s point of view.”
Annie Navarre
