Denmark is in crisis, after the simultaneous breakdown of the networks of the country’s major telephone operators; a catastrophic failure that affected both commercial and government services, including public transport and emergency services.
The situation comes at a time of high political tension due to a possible campaign of sabotage of electricity and telecommunications cables that connect Scandinavian countries to the rest of Europe. Last week, Europe strengthened protection of underwater power cables, given the possibility that Chinese or Russian ships could cut them to affect the general electricity supply.
However, the Danish government has not yet confirmed that this chaos was the result of such sabotage, and instead everything points to a more fundamental failure: a software error. This was confirmed by TDC Communications, the country’s largest telecommunications provider, whose director Lasse Bjerre Sørensen told broadcaster TV2 that the problem This happened due to a software update. which was implemented last Wednesday.
As a result of this critical error, TDC’s entire mobile network was disconnected, also affecting the operators who use its network; In fact, even emergency services, such as 112, have experienced problems, although emergency calls are possible. if the user removes the SIM card from their mobile or turn it off in settings. Emergency networks generally operate separately from commercial networks, and in this way some users have been able to warn of possible emergencies.
Meanwhile, the police also recommended using SIM cards from other operators, in addition to deploy all available patrol carswarning the population to warn them directly instead of calling the emergency services.
Even the train lines were affected and the service experienced interruptions due to signaling system failureswhich uses the telephone network to send control orders. According to Deputy Director Nicolai Smidt Sigsgaard, 31 trains have been held up at stations, but the good news is that the system has been operational since 6:00 p.m. Spanish Peninsula Time and work is already underway to return trains to terminals correspondents. . It remains unclear why the rail system was also affected by the mobile network outage, with Sørensen stating that TDC is working with international experts to investigate the error.
