Phones went silent across Spain at 09:40 on October 1, as DIGI and Movistar users lost calls and internet access. By mid-morning, the University of Alicante was also cut off: staff and students could not reach outside lines, and internet access vanished at a basic moment for campus life.
Downdetector, which tracks network failures, saw a flood of reports. By 10:30, DIGI alone had more than 4,500 complaints. Movistar users also reported problems, though fewer. DIGI, owned by Romania’s DIGI Communications (RCS & RDS), uses Telefónica’s network to provide mobile service in Spain. When shared infrastructure fails, both brands can be affected, leaving customers with no backup but to wait.
Democrata reported that around 80% of user complaints during the outage concerned mobile internet and coverage. DIGI customers were mainly affected in mobile services, while Movistar users reported problems with broadband and Wi-Fi. O2 was also affected. Problems began early in the morning, peaked around 10:00 and quickly subsided. Telefónica said the issue had been resolved and the impact was minimal, but had not disclosed the exact technical cause at the time.
At the University of Alicante, IT teams restored the intranet, but outside calls and internet access remained unavailable. People on campus had to manage without digital tools for hours. Local media said classes went on. The outage showed how exposed large institutions are when national telecom networks fail.
For regular users, the impact went beyond inconvenience: many could not make or receive calls, and restarting phones and routers did nothing. If the core network fails, users cannot fix the problem themselves; the provider has to resolve it.
Telefónica told Xataka Móvil there was "no problem. It’s fixed and barely noticed." Thousands complained, and a major university lost contact. The incident showed how one fault can knock out several operators and public services at once.
The outage ended within a few hours, but questions remain about whether shared networks can handle future failures and whether organizations are ready for another disruption. Earlier reports on other recent outages have shown that keeping critical services running during technical breakdowns concerns users and institutions alike. In Spain, network reliability is part of daily life and public trust.
