Lessons Learned from a National Blackout – A Telecom Operator’s Perspective This Monday, a major network outage hit Spain and Portugal, reminding us just how critical—and fragile—our digital infrastructure really is. For telecom operator, it was both a stress test and a wake-up call. Here are a few reflections from the ground (and the space): 1. Resilience is not just redundancy Backup systems are essential, but true resilience means preparing for cascading failures—across power grids, cloud providers, and core network systems. The growing dependency on cloud platforms adds new layers of risk and complexity. 2. The worst can actually happen (and then, it gets worse) It’s easy to design for “likely” scenarios. But black swans do appear—and when they do, they move fast. We need to design and drill for the edge cases, not just the averages. 3. People make the difference More than any technology, human capital is what matters most in a crisis. The competence, reactivity, and calm of the teams—engineers, customer support, field ops—are what keep things together when everything else is shaking. 4. Communication is part of the service In a blackout, connectivity may fail, but communication can’t. Users need clarity and calm, not silence. Real-time, transparent updates—internal and external—are essential. 5. Interdependence demands coordination Telecom, cloud, power, emergency services—we’re more connected than ever, but still too siloed. We need joint playbooks, not improvised responses. 6. Satellite connectivity expands the resilience frontier When terrestrial infrastructure is compromised—fiber, mobile, even core Internet exchanges—satellite connectivity offers a way out. It breaks through geographical constraints and can provide critical continuity, especially for emergency communications and infrastructure backbones. These moments are hard. But they teach us what no simulation can: how we must think, act, and lead when things go dark. Curious to hear how others in the industry experienced it—what worked, what didn’t? #Telecom #Resilience #CrisisManagement #Blackout #CloudDependency #PeopleFirst #SatelliteConnectivity #Spain #Portugal #LessonsLearned #teamhispasat
Melissa Jarquin
9mo
Weathered words, José Sánchez Ruiz. Fortunately, the situation seems to have stabilized, but it has certainly sparked renewed focus on the resilience of Spain’s energy mix and grid load management. This incident highlights the growing need for a more robust, diversified system—especially as Spain integrates more renewables and face increasingly unpredictable demand patterns. Over the years, here in Nicaragua, we’ve learned the value of preparedness through experience. While we may not always have abundant resources, it’s precisely that constraint that fuels the determination, creativity, and resilience of our technical teams and authorities. There may be lessons and approaches from our context that are worth sharing as part of the broader conversation on systems resilience.
Michael Gordon
9mo
Hi José — despite all planning for backup and resiliance (which is a must) we shall not forget that we simply cannot control everything. And yes: communication is key. But when a real problem comes up (eg in Spain this week) you cannot communicate any more. We need to be better prepared for sitiations which simply can happen. Our grandparents probably barely would have noticed the electricity outage - and we all run off to buy toilet paper (again!!), finding out that cannot pay by card. We need to change our mindset - and the way we act - by mentally preparing us (and our families) for such situations.
Lylya Tsai
9mo
José Sánchez Ruiz This is exactly the kind of “ugly gift” moment the industry needs to stop sleepwalking through resilience. Especially the “resilience ≠ redundancy” point. Most infra players still design for containment, not cascade. And when the cascade comes? It’s not your tech stack that saves you => it’s your people, your clarity, and your ability to act fast under chaos, and your cross-sector coordination (or lack of it). Who’s actually building off the pain before the next one hits??
Global Partnerships & Alliances | GTM Strategy | Co-Selling | SaaS Commercialization | Telco & Cloud Ecosystems | SCION
9moIncredibly insightful reflections, José. At Anapaya we’ve seen how network-level innovations like SCION can play a pivotal role in blackout scenarios. SCION provides path control, isolation, and end-to-end trust, allowing organizations to predefine resilient, fail-safe routes—even during cascading failures or when parts of the internet go down. It’s not just about redundancy—it’s about true resilience through secure, deterministic connectivity. SCION has already proven itself in critical infrastructures like the Secure Swiss Finance Network. Excited to see more telecom operators explore these architectures as part of their resilience strategies.