Fastweb downMorning of chaos for thousands of users throughout Italy. From 10.20am today, October 22nd, the Milanese provider's network has stopped working, disrupting home and business connections.
Secondo Downdetector, the platform that monitors the failures of the main online services, in less than an hour, over 30 thousand reports, with a peak shortly after 11:00.
Il The service disruption affected both landline and mobile networks., with widespread difficulties accessing the internet. Reports came primarily from Rome, Milan, Turin, Bologna, Verona, Bari, Florence, Padua, and Lucca, but the problem quickly spread across the country, blocking connectivity on a large scale.
Fastweb and Vodafone: "Temporary outage, technicians working."
A joint statement from Fastweb and Vodafone, which share part of the network infrastructure, arrived late in the morning to confirm the nature of the outage: "a problem is underway temporary disruption to landline and mobile networksTechnicians are working to restore services as quickly as possible. We apologize to the customers affected and will provide updates on the progress of the work.
From 12.15 some features of the mobile network are back progressively operational, but fiber and landline services were still affected in many areas. Company sources have suggested that the resolution shouldn't take long, but after more than three hours of disruption, normality has still not been restored.
Domino effect: problems for other services too
The Fastweb downtime had a knock-on impact on various online servicesDowndetector has also reported outages for Google, Bper Banca, and other digital platforms. However, these are side effects of the Fastweb outage, due to the inability to connect to servers via the provider's network. Many users have expressed their frustration on social media, particularly on X (Twitter), where the hashtag #FastwebDown has quickly become a national trending topic.
The problem was solved this afternoon: "It was due to a DNS error."
In the early afternoon Fastweb has announced that the outage has been resolved"The event was caused by a DNS resolution issue, which temporarily prevented access to some services and websites," the company announced. "Technicians took prompt action to resolve the issue, implementing all necessary mitigation measures to restore full operation."
By 14:00 PM, most customers had seen their fixed connectivity services restored, while only a limited number of internal systems required additional work, which is now being completed. Fastweb apologized for the inconvenience and reiterated its commitment to "ensuring maximum reliability and continuity of services."
Consumers protest: "We need compensation and more protection."
The long interruption has raised immediate reactions from consumer associations.
Assoutenti is calling for a review of telephone companies' customer care policies and for the assessment of service disruptions to include financial compensation, given the importance of the internet in daily life. Codacons is more forceful, calling for direct compensation: "We ask Fastweb to provide discounts on bills or other forms of compensation for all affected users, whether private individuals or businesses. Those who have suffered demonstrable damages will be able to take action to obtain fair compensation."
Just two days after the AWS blackout
The Fastweb case comes just a few days after distance from the massive Amazon Web Services downtime (Aws), which paralyzed global platforms like Snapchat, Fortnite, Airbnb, Reddit, and Coinbase for hours on Monday. The new Italian blackout relaunches the theme of the fragility of digital infrastructures: a few large operators concentrate enormous portions of traffic and, when one of them stops, the effects spread immediately and widely.
Last update 15,50am
