Cell Phone Outage
IMAGINE PUERTO WITHOUT CELL PHONE SERVICE: NO 5G (yes, we sometimes get it), not even 3G (which also occurs), and no internet connections. We are used to losing the internet for a few minutes or hours on our modems, but on our phones in town? Never. Until May 31, 2026 when we had no Telcel connections for almost four hours between 4 pm and 7:30 pm. Of course, there was no TelMex either.
All the internet on the coast comes from Telmex fiber optic connections and Starlink. Starlink can provide internet via wifi, but it doesn’t work as a mobile carrier — it won’t replace your Telcel signal. What it did do was keep homes and businesses with Starlink equipment connected when Telmex went down.
So, what was the problem? Our Telmex connection comes from Oaxaca by two routes – one along highway 175 through Pochutla and the other along highways from Pinotepa Nacional. (Up until this year, the Pochutla route was to Salina Cruz, but that ended with outages caused by highway construction between Pochutla and Huatulco.) When there is a fire or a tree falls on the cables along one route, service may be slow, but we keep our cell phone connections.
On May 31, heavy rains in the mountains caused a tree to fall on a cable in Amuzgo, near Putla de Guerrero, affecting service to Pinotepa Nacional. At around the same time, a tree fell in San José del Pácifico cutting service to Pochutla.
The plan now is a third route on Highway 131 connecting Puerto Escondido to Oaxaca through Sola de Vega. For sure trees will fall, but hopefully not on the same day, at the same time, on all three routes.
Ñuu Rinconada , is a co-work space at Benito Juarez 47, on the third floor, that offers Starlink.
