Thousands of Movistar land line and internet users in Málaga province are still without service after a fire at one of its plants on Friday.
Around 70% of the lines have now been restored but for the remaining 30% it is a question of ‘wait and see’ as Movistar cannot guarantee when these will be normalised. According to Movistar, the remaining 30% cannot just be reset but require changes to the infrastructure.
Around 90,000 telephone subscribers and 10,000 ADSL internet users were affected by the fire, thought possibly to have been caused by a lightning strike.
The o91 (Health) and 081 (National Police) numbers were affected and in some cases this has meant that people were unable to renew documentation on Monday. Businesses have also been affected through the ability to use electronic services such as accepting credit card payments.
Around 90,000 telephone users were affected on the first day, 45,000 on the second day and 30,000 on the third day, which was Monday. Up to 10,000 will still be without telephone services today, Tuesday.
Almost all telephone lines are expected to be repaired by the end of today but not the ADSL internet.
The Junta de Andalucia has stated that those affected are entitled to financial compensation via an adjustment to the telephone bills. If the cause of the incident is deemed ‘unpredictable’, Movistar is limited to paying a pro-rated compensation based upon the outage time.
Compensation for the loss of telephone is expected to be around €0.50 per day and for ADSL internet it will be around €1.33 per day, so a maximum of about €2 per day.