A disputed failure in the service of Euskaltel - the leading phone provider in the Basque Country - leaves users out of coverage for well over 7 hours. Besides the effect on private communications, and the problems associated with that lack of capacity, the most critical problem lies elsewhere. The collapse also affected the access to SOS Deiak, the local emergency number.

SOS Deiak is the 112 number: an equivalent of the 911 in the USA or Canada. It took well over 15 years to have most countries within the European Union adopting a common number for all emergencies. In the case of Spain, it is a Royal Decree of 1997 that requires private phone companies to offer the number as a public service, including automatic roaming data capacity for all users needing to report an emergency. The system relies on the broadly adopted GSM standard for mobile communications. Regardless of whether Euskaltel compensates their customers in a satisfactory manner, such as the now promised free calls during the weekends of July, the downfall signals a severe fracture of a public service that requires further scrutiny. This collapse, which could be primarily technical,is probably also intertwined with the privatization of public communications and the business models associated with them. For instance, formal excuses are being thrown back and forth between the two companies liable for the breakdown. While it is Euskaltel that failed its customers, it could have been caused by Vodafone trying to repair common shared facilities that affected the system. Procedures and malfunction that Vodafone argues were solved quickly on their end but was not adequately picked up by Euskaltel. This version is of course disputed by Euskatel, which lingers on old and persistent disputes between these and other providers.

The obvious need is for an independent investigation into the failure, but most importantly a revision of this model, both on technical and business grounds. Talking about communications as public services often seems taboo. Not only we are facing an issue of growing consumer dependence on these networks but also of public services associated with them. Either this services are guaranteed or the energy placed to imagine new possibilities and share the growing potential around these networks should be placed elsewhere. In this case, we might be looking at roaming models that need to be operative concurrently before a network goes down, or ways to automatically guarantee the existence of another network if the provider fails, which in any case point to stronger coordination and accountability. Loosing access to a commonly accepted, recognized, and supposedly operative emergency number is too big a deal to let it go by.