Ten years ago, the south-central Brazil has experienced a blackout in the electrical system and, in some places, the energy came back 24 hours later. The government blamed a lightning. Last year, there was a blackout in the airport system, leaving millions of Brazilians and foreigners literally “prisoners” at airports. The problem started to be resolved after a plane crashed with 176 passengers, killing all, on a main avenue of Sao Paulo. This year, all public hospitals in Rio de Janeiro had to close the doors because of an epidemy of dengue, they ran out of beds for patients. This situation has only normalized because the epidemy weakened itself.

This week, the State of Sao Paulo has experienced a blackout of the main telephone company. The situation seems to have been normalized, but the damage was great, although the estimated value of the losses that were caused by it still is unkown.

It started on Tuesday, when more than 2 million of Speedy (broadband service) were unable to access the Internet. Soon, it became widespread, affecting municipal, state and federal public agencies, as well as companies of all sizes. Financial institutions such as banks and credit card operators were unable to perform theirs operations. Police stations could not make the record of criminal events. Online services of various public agencies were no longer functioning. Merchandises were stopped on the road because the truck drivers failed to obtain authorization. The system began to normalize on Thursday, but was still unstable (a third of users of the Speedy remained without access the Internet).

On Wednesday, the president of the Telefônica said that him was sorry for what it was happening and said that, together with Cisco, they were searching the causes of this great flaw. It sounds like a big “oops”. This company is the champion of complaints in Brazil.

Probably nothing would happen with Telefônica if the only ones affected were the users of the Speedy. They would be millions of voices that would be easily obscured by lengthy legal procedures and paperwork. But major banks and other financial institutions are already preparing lawsuits because of this stoppage in services. The Anatel (regulatory agency of the telecommunications industry) is reviewing the case and perhaps fines Telefonica and Cisco by about R$ 50 million each (US$ 25 million).

These blackouts are a “tradition” here in Brazil. This time, fortunately, no one died. But millions of people had been stressed and the internet blackout caused millions of dollar in damage. Now, the Brazilians will do as always do: wait for the next blackout, which, apparently, will arrive in 2010, when the electrical system will collapse, at least it is what specialists in the sector say since 2007 for the federal government. But the government is too busy involved in corruption to pay attention to the Brazilians.