In search of connections that don't break

Remember July 2025, when Post – as it happens, Luxembourg's largest telecommunications provider – suffered an outage that cut off both internet and phone connections? The entire network was affected to a point to which residents could not reach emergency services, prompting warnings from the national rescue service, CGDIS, that calls to the emergency hotline could not get through. What initially may have seemed to some like a technical hiccup progressively turned into a source of nationwide confusion: Claude Strasser, Post's company director, first attributed the outage to a software error, only for the company to a day later describe it as the result of an "exceptionally advanced" cyberattack.

What lasted only an afternoon in Luxembourg is a daily reality in other parts of the world – and often by design. China's Great Firewall routinely blocks access to messaging apps and search engines, in Iran, widespread internet shutdowns have been imposed intermittently since January, leaving citizens scrambling for ways to communicate. India, too, has experienced repeated state-ordered shutdowns, with hundreds of millions affected in some regions during elections or protests – the list goes on. The core problem is that communication networks are fragile and can deliberately be disabled, jammed, or censored, leaving civilians cut off from information and essential services ranging from emergency response and healthcare to financial transactions, education, and public administration alike.