At the end of August, the EU Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) published a report on the major Internet network outage incidents in the EU in 2012. The report reveals that out of the 79 incidents of severe outages of networks and communication services reported by national authorities, 50% affected mobile telephony and mobile Internet access.
Other key conclusions include:
- 18 EU Member States reported significant incidents and nine Member States did not report any.
- Incidents caused by network overload or power failures had most impact in terms of number of users affected times duration.
- For most incident reports and the four services (fixed and mobile telephony, as well as fixed and mobile Internet), the root cause was “system failures”.
- Incidents caused by natural phenomena (mainly storms and snowfall) lasted the longest (36 hours on average).
