- Telefonica update causes nationwide mobile outage across Spain
- Millions lose phone, text, data, and emergency access in early morning crash
- Follows April blackout that also disrupted cellular networks across the region
Spain has suffered its second major telecom outage in 2 months.
A widespread mobile network outage early Tuesday morning left millions without phone or internet access. The outage, which affected all major operators including Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, Digimobil and O2, began around 2:00 AM CET and worsened by 5:00 AM, disrupting services in major cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, Bilbao and Malaga. Users suffered a complete loss of signal, inability to make calls, receive texts or use mobile data.
The outage was caused by a Telefonica network update that didn’t go as planned. The outage affected both consumers and enterprises across Spain and took down the “112” Spanish emergency number across multiple communities. Telefonica said it had re-established communications across the country early this afternoon.
This follows a wide-ranging power disruption that affected millions in Spain, Portugal and parts of France on April 28. That 10-hour-plus electricity outage led to a loss of cellular coverage and mobile data for users.
"I can tell you it was much more painful to be without any connectivity for 7 hours – this is what happened – than to be without any electricity for 11 hours," Oleg Volpin, president of Telefonica Global stated at the recent FutureNet World show in London.