Telefonica's Spanish network update causes partial communications outage

Spanish telecom company Telefonica said works to update its network had caused a communications outage of fixed phone and internet lines in some areas of Spain on Tuesday, three weeks after the country suffered a catastrophic power blackout.

The company said in a brief statement its crews were working on reestablishing the service and the 112 Emergency lines were already back on in the affected areas after suffering disruptions since the early hours of Tuesday.

The communications outage comes after a massive electricity blackout in Spain and Portugal on April 28, whose causes are yet to be determined.

Telefonica is the second-largest operator in Spain after Orange's MasOrange, and other large providers' services were not affected. Telefonica's mobile service also appeared to work fine.

According to the Downdetector monitoring website, the disruptions being reported were mostly about fixed-line internet services in the regions of Aragon, Valencia, Andalusia, Extremadura, the Basque Country and Navarra.