KPN phone outage makes several Dutch hospitals hard to reach
A technical fault at KPN made several hospitals hard to reach by phone on Saturday, though the emergency number 112 still works as normal.
A telephone fault at telecoms provider KPN made several hospitals hard to reach on Saturday, including UMC Utrecht, the Wilhelmina Kinderziekenhuis (children's hospital) and Maastricht UMC+. University hospitals in Nijmegen, Rotterdam and Groningen also reported problems with telephone access. The fault arose overnight.
The hospitals say they are open as normal. The emergency number 112 remains reachable as normal.
UMC Utrecht and the Wilhelmina Kinderziekenhuis have set up an alternative phone number for urgent matters, as has UMCG in Groningen. Radboud UMC in Nijmegen says callers may get a connection but not hear the hospital employee, or may get no connection at all.
KPN calls it a "local technical fault" (lokale technische storing) affecting business customers in one of its network locations. According to the company, it was not caused by a fire or a hack.
KPN says it has rerouted part of the telephone traffic, so that "most of the impact has been resolved". The company says a smaller group of business customers is still affected.