Most MEO Customers Back Online After Storm Kristin: Free Data & Credits

The Portugal telecom provider MEO has restored mobile or fixed connections to roughly 9 out of 10 customers in the corridors battered by Storm Kristin, a pace that eases pressure on households, remote workers and small firms that spent nearly three weeks offline.

Why This Matters

• Most lines back before March: Fixed network availability sits at 91 % and should hit 95 % by 28 February, while mobile already covers 97 % of residents in the disaster zone.

• Automatic bill credits: Days without service will be deducted from next month’s invoice and data is unlimited for 30 days in the hardest-hit counties.

• Energy still the bottleneck: If your street has no power, your router will stay dark even though the backbone is up.

• Regulator watching: ANACOM wants faster field repairs and temporary national roaming so phones latch onto any available signal during crises.

State of the Networks Today

Crews working for MEO have rewired more than 2 000 km of fibre, erected fresh poles to replace 28 000 collapsed masts and flown in 35 portable mobile towers. According to the company’s latest field log, the scramble has lifted overall service availability from 70 % eight days after the cyclone to the current early-90s percentile. The operator says the gap that remains is concentrated in “pockets where roads are blocked or electricity is intermittent”.

How the Grid Broke – and Was Rebuilt

Storm Kristin barrelled across mainland Portugal on 28 January, shredding cables and leaving 1.1 million homes without power. MEO’s contingency hub in Alfragide kicked in its crisis-room playbook within hours: dispatch 1 500 technicians, deploy VOIR rapid-response vans, crane in diesel generators, and, where fibre lay underwater, swing microwave links and satellite back-ups into place. Company engineers credit seven years of redundancy investments—extra rings in the transmission network, automatic rerouting software and bigger energy buffers—for keeping every county seat on the air, even when outlying cells died.

Yet recovery remained painstaking. Safety rules slowed climbing crews, flooded fields barred cherry-pickers, and repeated gusts undid freshly-spliced joints. MEO admits that in rural pine forests “we fix a branch, the wind snaps the next tree”. The ratio of repaired lines to brand-new breaks only tipped positive in the second week of February.

Regulatory Pressure and Political Back-and-Forth

Public patience thinned long before cables were spliced. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa scolded operators for "behaving badly", arguing that emergency calls failed when citizens most needed them. The industry lobby Apritel shot back, calling the remarks "unfair". In the middle sits ANACOM, which has logged about 150 formal complaints tied to Kristin. Its chair, Sandra Maximiano, both praised the field effort and issued a shopping list: enable temporary roaming across all three mobile networks, streamline permits for new poles and waive radio-licence fees during catastrophes.

What This Means for Residents

• Check your bill: March invoices should display an automatic prorated credit for every day your bundle was down. If it doesn’t, photo the outage ticket and file a claim via ANACOM’s online portal.

• Leverage unlimited data: If fixed fibre is still offline but you’ve mobile coverage, the operator’s 30-day unlimited allowance can tide you over—just activate it in the My MEO app.

• Power first, Wi-Fi later: Routers depend on household electricity. Until EDP reconnects your street, telecoms crews cannot restore the last metre; consider a small UPS if blackouts persist.

• Fallback signals: In zones where only one provider has service, phones may soon roam nationally if ANACOM’s proposal sticks—keep an eye on firmware updates.

Looking Ahead: How to Stay Connected in Future Storms

Meteorologists warn that the Atlantic cyclone track is edging south, making events like Kristin less exceptional. Telecom specialists expect the three major operators to accelerate burying of aerial fibre, install more long-life batteries at rural cabinets and sign mutual-aid roaming pacts before next winter. Consumers, meanwhile, can hedge with a dual-SIM phone, store key documents offline and learn to restart ONTs after a surge.

The immediate crisis is fading, but Kristin exposed a clear lesson: in Portugal’s digital life, connectivity now ranks alongside water and light—and everyone from insurers to municipalities must plan accordingly.