A partial outage in Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica’s fixed telephone and internet networks downed some emergency service numbers for hours on Tuesday, the latest incident affecting critical infrastructure in the country.
Emergency services in several regions including Aragón, Galicia, Extremadura, Andalusia and Valencia published messages on social media at around 9:00 am saying the key 112 number was not working.
It also affected landline and internet services for businesses, organisations and citizens.
Telefonica said “upgrade works on the network” had caused the incident that “affected the fixed communications services of some companies and public services”, which were “restored completely” by 12:30 pm.
The operator explained that it was handled by its incident management committee, who isolated the specific problems and deployed field personnel to resolve them as soon as possible.
During the outage, several regions changed their emergency phone numbers so certain services could be reached. These have all been restored now back the original 112 number.
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The disruption comes three weeks after a huge blackout of unknown origin plunged all of Spain and Portugal into chaos, sparking a debate about the vulnerability of the power grid.
One week later, the theft of copper cables on a high-speed railway line between Madrid and the southern city of Seville halted trains and left more than 10,000 travellers stranded.
