COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Telecom services have been restored to remote communities in Greenland that were cut off from crucial satellite access due to a massive power blackout in far-away Spain, the Arctic island’s telecoms group said on Tuesday.
Tusass, owned by Greenland’s government, said on Monday that it had lost connection to satellite equipment based in Spain that provides telephone, internet, TV and radio services.
“It’s because of an error some 3,000 km (1,900 miles) away,” a Tusass spokesperson told Reuters, adding that connection had been restored overnight.
In 2023, Tusass selected the Maspalomas ground station in Spains’s Gran Canaria island off the west coast of Africa as the hub for its new satellite network which provides a critical lifeline for some of Greenland’s most isolated communities.
Spain and Portugal switched their power back on Tuesday after the worst blackout in their history, though authorities offered little explanation for what had caused it or how they would prevent it from happening again.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen; Editing by Terje Solsvik and Peter Graff)
