Sandra Maximiano spoke on the second and final day of the 34th APDC Congress, held at Culturgest in Lisbon, themed ‘Business & Science Working Together’.
“This incident made it clear that the ability to access fixed services depends on the power supply to terminal equipment at user premises”, she stated.
Even if the networks “remain operational, in a disaster or emergency situation, fixed networks do not meet the necessary conditions to be considered an alternative,” she added.
Mobile services were also affected across all operators, albeit progressively throughout the day, “as the cell sites lost their backup power capacity.”
“These services, whose terminal equipment is powered by batteries that can potentially be recharged, became the main form of communication available to the general public shortly after the power failure,” the official pointed out, noting that “when comparing the autonomy levels of operators in Portugal with those indicated by other countries, it is found that, in general, national operators are in line with international practices.”
Sandra Maximiano further indicated that “both companies and Anacom have already identified measures to prevent or minimize the occurrence of similar incidents in the future.”
