Since yesterday afternoon and almost until ten o’clock in the evening, the emergency telephone service 112 has been globally interrupted in the Community of Madrid. Something “unheard of”, according to the words of the councilor spokesman, Miguel Ángel García, and for which the regional government has opened an information file at the telephone distributor Orange.
Not only have they asked the telephone operator for explanations, but they have also opened an information file because they consider the incident to be “very serious”. He also indicated that it is Orange that must provide explanations, since by contract it has the obligation to guarantee the supply.
In fact, he assures that he had “up to seven levels of emergency”, so that if the first failed, there were up to seven other situations “in which the service should be provided normally, and they all failed”, which seems “unheard of” to him.
To prevent this situation from happening again, it has been reported that the Department of Digitalisation has approached the Secretary of State for Telecommunications to draw up a protocol to ensure that this type of situation does not happen again. This could be done, for example, by connecting the 112 service to other operators, so that another service takes over in the event of a breakdown of one of them.
On the other hand, Councilor García Martín also reported that this generalized fall of Orange, which affected not only 112, but also the telephone number of the Civil Guard, “although the government delegation in this case did not provide any type of information”, was censored.
Faced with this, the Madrid Security and Emergency Agency 112 (ASEM112) reported the incident and asked the population, in case of health, fire or rescue emergencies, to call 061 – SUMMA 112 telephone number – and in case of emergency security emergencies, 091 and 092, the numbers of the National and Municipal Police, respectively, which worked.
“Since yesterday at 10 p.m., it has been operating normally,” he stressed.
