Two Months After Storm Kristin, Communities Near Tomar Still Have No Internet or Television

More than two months after Storm Kristin tore through central Portugal in early February, residents in rural communities near Tomar say they remain cut off from basic telecommunications — no internet, no television, and in some cases no reliable phone signal. Fallen communication poles and severed cables that were temporarily patched in the immediate aftermath have failed again, and full repairs are not expected until the end of April at the earliest.

A Temporary Fix That Did Not Last

When Kristin struck on 3-4 February, it brought sustained winds that toppled trees onto power and communication lines across the Santarém district. Emergency crews from E-Redes restored electricity within days in most areas, but the telecommunications infrastructure — fibre-optic cables, copper lines, and relay equipment operated by private providers — proved harder to repair.

In the weeks after the storm, technicians installed temporary fixes: provisional splices on broken cables and portable signal boosters. For a brief period, service returned. But residents report that the repairs failed within weeks, leaving them once again without connectivity. Fallen poles remain visible along rural roads, with cables hanging loose or lying on the ground.

"Forgotten and Increasingly Isolated"

Residents in affected villages describe feeling abandoned. For elderly people living alone — a significant portion of the population in rural Ribatejo — the loss of television and telephone is not merely an inconvenience. It is a safety issue. Many rely on landlines to contact family or emergency services and on television as their primary connection to the outside world.

"We have been told it will be fixed by the end of April, but nobody can give us a firm date," one resident told SIC Notícias. "In the meantime, we are forgotten and isolated."

The situation is particularly frustrating because electricity was restored relatively quickly. The asymmetry highlights a structural gap: while Portugal's electricity grid operator, E-Redes, is a regulated utility with clear obligations to restore service, telecommunications providers face less prescriptive restoration timelines and can prioritise commercially dense urban areas over low-revenue rural zones.

A Recurring Pattern

This is not the first time rural Portugal has been left waiting months for telecoms restoration after extreme weather. Storm Filomena in late 2024 caused similar extended outages in parts of the Algarve, and the October 2023 storm season left villages in the Trás-os-Montes region without broadband for over six weeks.

The pattern has prompted ANACOM, the national communications regulator, to propose new minimum service restoration standards for rural areas, but the rules have yet to be finalised. Consumer protection groups argue that existing contracts already oblige providers to maintain service continuity and that affected customers should receive automatic compensation for prolonged outages.

What Comes Next

With the provisional end-of-April repair deadline approaching, local parish councils near Tomar have escalated complaints to ANACOM and to the Santarém district civil protection authority. The mayor of Tomar has called on the government to treat rural telecommunications as essential infrastructure deserving the same rapid-response obligations as electricity and water.

For the residents still waiting, the message is clear: in 2026 Portugal, losing your internet for two months should not be treated as an acceptable outcome.