Massive problems suffered yesterday by Spain’s biggest telecoms operator saw the Canary Islands’ emergency telephone number knocked out of action for hours.
Millions of customers of Telefónica throughout Spain lost Internet, landlines and other services such as online banking after what was described by the firm as a “network update” which caused an “error” in its key routers early on Tuesday.
The loss of communications affected not just businesses and individual customers but a host of other services, including the crucial 112 emergency number in the Canaries.
Within minutes of the failure, the regional authorities were quick to post messages on platforms such as social media advising of the ongoing issues and offering alternative telephone numbers to report emergencies.
In addition, several local authorities, including Gran Canaria capital Las Palmas, activated their own back-up emergency plans to deal with incidents in anticipation of the Telefónica outage lasting throughout the day. People with a medical emergency were advised to go directly to their nearest health centre or hospital urgently rather than try and contact 112 for an ambulance.
The Telefónica outage, which also hit smaller telecoms operators who use the Spanish giant’s mobile and Internet network, is the latest in a spate of nationwide failures that have called into question Spain’s resilience in fields from energy to communications. The chaos prompted the president of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, to demand that advance notice be given by the company when it plans to carry out key updates to its networks.
