The Generalitat launches a '112' for mobile and internet outages in towns

BarcelonaA mobile coverage outage, a damaged telecommunications tower, a cut fiber optic cable. Until nine months ago, when one of these things happened, Catalan town councils had to blindly call the operators and wait. Since last October, however, they have had a direct phone line with the operators with which they can request information and follow-up. In the balance of these first nine months, the Government estimates nearly 1,000 calls received and over 450 incidents managed, with 746 municipalities already subscribed to the service, representing approximately 80% of the total.

"The paradigm that existed until now is changing," summarized the Secretary of Telecommunications and Digital Transformation, Albert Tort. All of this is part of the TelcoCat Protocol, the agreement between the Generalitat, the operators, and the local sector born to streamline the management of these types of incidents. According to Tort, the service places town councils, the Generalitat, and private operators, who until now operated separately, "in the same information ecosystem."

More than 60% of the registered incidents are related to mobile coverage, affecting not only phones but also devices such as payment terminals, which are increasingly essential for commerce and economic activity. The rest are divided between broadband, combined affectations, and DTT coverage. Of the total, 88 have been recurring, an indicator that has led the Generalitat to strengthen the service's monitoring team. The operation, Tort detailed, is simple: the Government "enables the phone line" and, from there, the subscribed operators – both large companies and those with territorial scope – must provide information "at regular time intervals" to the institutions, which then pass it on to the affected residents.

The deployment of the phone line coincides with other investments in digital infrastructure: the public fiber optic network already exceeds 8,000 kilometers, and the XCAT Connecta project plans to connect more than 6,100 public headquarters and facilities – hospitals, schools, police stations – to this network. The Government is also working on a new platform, InfoConnecta, which will allow town councils to monitor incidents in real-time.