Residents across Denmark are facing a major telecommunications outage that is disrupting mobile phone services and affecting emergency calls to 112.
TDC, Denmark’s largest telecommunications provider, is currently experiencing a widespread service disruption that appears to impact thousands of customers. The company indicates the problem began after a software update rolled out on Wednesday and is investigating the cause.
While TDC focuses on technical causes, speculation has circulated about possible external factors. This comes amid heightened attention around the Baltic Sea after the Danish Navy inspected the Chinese vessel Yi Peng 3 — which had departed from a Russian port — following concerns that subsea internet cables, including the BCS and C-Lion1, were damaged. Authorities have not confirmed any link between those incidents and the TDC outage.
❗️Chaos in Denmark – no mobile phone service, trains at a standstill.
According to media reports, there has been a widespread failure of the mobile phone network in Denmark. The emergency call system is also said to have failed. The Danish railway is also out of service, trains…— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) November 28, 2024
TDC has been thrust into the spotlight as it works to identify the exact root cause. The company has said it is reviewing procedures to help prevent similar incidents in the future and is communicating with customers and authorities as it responds.
Although TDC has not provided a precise timeline for a full service restoration, it has stated that the outage is not expected to last multiple days and is actively working to resolve the problem.
Local authorities have taken immediate measures to compensate for the communication disruption. On the island of Funen, police have deployed all available patrol cars to act as direct contact points for residents. With regular phone lines unreliable, officers are urging people to approach police patrols in person if they cannot reach help by phone.
Customers with broadband internet access are being advised to use alternative communication tools such as FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, or other internet-based calling services to stay in touch while mobile networks are impaired.
TDC has implemented a temporary mitigation intended to restore partial calling capability. Although calls under this interim solution may suffer from degraded audio quality, it allows many customers to make calls again while engineers work toward a complete fix.
(Photo by Serge Taeymans)
Related coverage: Chinese hackers breaching telecom operators in espionage campaigns has been reported in other contexts, but no confirmed connection to this TDC outage has been announced.
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