Portugal's Emergency Network at Risk: First Responders Face Years Without Modern Backup

Portugal's telecom giant NOS has publicly distanced itself from the persistent failures plaguing the national emergency communications network, SIRESP, insisting its role as a supplier gives it no say over the system's troubled technological architecture—a position that highlights a deeper crisis in how the country manages critical infrastructure.

Why This Matters

• SIRESP failures during storms and emergencies in early 2024 left first responders without reliable communications for over 30 hours in some areas.

• NOS denies responsibility for technology choices despite providing connectivity and satellite backup, creating a blame vacuum.

• The government has committed €26M just to keep the aging system running through 2025, with no modern replacement expected until 2028.

• Residents relying on emergency services face continued uncertainty about the reliability of police, fire, and medical coordination during crises.

Operator Rejects Blame for Network That Keeps Failing

Miguel Almeida, chief executive of NOS, used the company's annual results briefing in Lisbon to flatly reject any culpability for the chronic problems afflicting SIRESP, the state emergency communications backbone that connects police, firefighters, civil protection, and medical responders across Portugal.

"We have nothing to do with the technological options that SIRESP adopted," Almeida stated, adding that while NOS is willing to serve the state and considers emergency infrastructure work important, "it's frustrating when people accuse us of being responsible" for failures the company says it has no power to prevent.

NOS provides fixed-line connectivity to SIRESP sites and supplies satellite redundancy services—roles secured through public tenders. But the broader design, equipment selection, and operational architecture of the network were decided by SIRESP S.A., the state-owned entity managing the system, and not by NOS or any of its contractor peers like Altice Labs and Motorola.

The CEO's comments expose a structural accountability gap: the company bears the "burden without the capacity to decide" on the solution's design, leaving residents to wonder who, if anyone, is truly accountable when the system goes dark.

What This Means for Residents

For anyone living in Portugal, the stakes are immediate and tangible. When SIRESP fails, firefighters battling wildfires cannot coordinate with aircraft. Police responding to emergencies lose contact with dispatch. Medical teams rushing to rural accidents face radio silence.

In January and March 2024, the system suffered what authorities euphemistically called "point failures" during severe storms, including Depression Kristin (a severe Atlantic storm system). In the municipality of Batalha (located in central Portugal), SIRESP was completely inoperational for more than 30 hours. Civil protection deployed mobile stations to patch the gaps, but these lack the range and reliability of fixed towers.

Critics, including the Portuguese Association of Security and Civil Protection Technicians (abbreviated as AsproCivil), describe SIRESP as "technologically obsolete" and operating at the edge of its capacity. The network relies on TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) technology, a European standard that was cutting-edge when the system launched in the 2000s but is now decades behind modern 4G and 5G critical-mission platforms.

Persistent vulnerabilities include cable connections to repeater towers that are easily severed by fallen trees or fire, backup batteries with insufficient autonomy, and emergency generators that have failed in the past, notably during a major blackout in April 2023.

A System That Costs Hundreds of Millions, Yet Still Fails

Between 2019 and 2024, SIRESP has consumed over €164M in taxpayer funds, pushing the system's lifetime cost to approximately €720M since its creation—roughly equivalent to €70 per Portuguese resident over the system's entire operational lifetime. In January 2024, the Portugal Council of Ministers approved yet another €26M compensatory payment to SIRESP S.A. to keep the network operational for at least one more year—a decision widely interpreted as a stopgap measure that postpones the arrival of a genuinely modern communications platform.

The government has acknowledged the network's "structural and operational limitations" and in May 2023 created a technical working group tasked with studying SIRESP's "urgent replacement." That effort was suspended in November 2023 due to a potential conflict of interest involving an advisor, delaying any concrete action.

Meanwhile, SIRESP S.A. has been without permanent leadership for nearly two years, further complicating efforts to overhaul or even adequately maintain the system. The earliest a new 4G/LTE critical-mission network—potentially leveraging commercial 5G towers—might be operational is 2028, leaving residents and first responders vulnerable for at least two more years.

Who Actually Decides What Technology Gets Used?

The core of the dispute lies in how SIRESP's technology was selected and by whom. When the network was implemented, TETRA was the European standard for emergency radio, developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and widely adopted across the continent. The system was rolled out in phases and installed nationwide, excluding only Porto's metro, meeting the deadlines and budgets set in the original concession contract.

But as climate-related emergencies grow more frequent and severe, that two-decade-old technology is showing its age. Switching to 4G or 5G networks, which offer greater bandwidth, interoperability, and resilience, requires fundamental architectural changes—decisions that lie with the Portugal government and SIRESP S.A., not with the private contractors who maintain and connect the existing infrastructure.

NOS, despite its prominent role as a supplier, insists it was never consulted on or involved in defining those original choices, nor does it have influence over the replacement strategy. Almeida's remarks suggest the company feels unfairly scapegoated for failures that stem from strategic decisions made at the governmental level.

The Broader Implications

The controversy around SIRESP and NOS's role reveals broader questions about how Portugal manages critical public infrastructure. Contracts governing SIRESP include clauses that limit or even exclude supplier responsibility during force majeure events or extreme scenarios—precisely the situations the network was built to handle. This contractual structure dilutes accountability, leaving no single entity clearly on the hook when failures occur.

Some critics argue that SIRESP functions well in controlled exercises and official reports but collapses under real-world stress, serving more to "sustain the appearance of a prepared state" than to deliver reliable emergency communications.

Proposals in the Portugal Transformation, Recovery, and Resilience Plan (PTRR) to equip parish councils with satellite phones and Starlink connections have also raised concerns about digital sovereignty, with critics questioning whether critical infrastructure should depend on multinational corporations.

Financial Performance Amid the Controversy

Amid the public relations challenge around SIRESP, NOS reported a 9.6% decline in net profit for the year ending in 2024, dropping to €245.9M from the prior year. The company attributed the drop to fewer non-recurring gains in 2024 compared to 2023. Stripping out those one-off items, however, core net income actually grew 29.3% to €241.5M, suggesting operational health despite the headline decline.

On another front, Almeida confirmed that NOS is "comfortable" with its 25% stake in Sport TV, the sports broadcasting joint venture it shares with MEO and Vodafone. "We've been in Sport TV for 25 years, from the beginning," he said, adding that the company sees no reason to increase or reduce its holding.

What Residents Should Know

In case of emergency, always call 112 (the European emergency number). During SIRESP outages, emergency services can still receive your calls but may experience delayed coordination between police, fire, and medical units. Response times may be slower in rural areas during system failures.

What Comes Next

For residents and businesses in Portugal, the message is clear: don't expect rapid improvement in emergency communications reliability. The government has committed to keeping SIRESP on life support through at least 2025, but meaningful modernization remains years away. In the meantime, the risk of communication blackouts during fires, floods, and storms persists.

NOS's public position distancing itself from SIRESP's failures underscores a growing frustration among private contractors caught between lucrative state contracts and reputational damage from a system they say they cannot control. How the government and SIRESP S.A. respond to these accountability questions will shape whether Portugal's emergency infrastructure receives the overhaul residents deserve.