Cellphone services restored in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA: Spanish telecom company Movistar said it restored both voice and data service to 16 million cell phone subscribers after a massive outage on Monday.

"Movistar is analyzing the causes that provoked this incident," the unit of Spanish telecom giant Telefonica said in a brief statement.

Argentina's National Communications Commission blamed the Movistar outage on "a defect in Telefonica software, in particular the signaling system".

The problem affected both cell phones and some fixed-line customers, according to the commission, which said it will impose "tough sanctions" on Movistar if an investigation establishes the company was at fault.

Some 50 million cell phones are in service in the Argentine market, or about 10 million more units than the country has people.

Movistar competes in Argentina with Mexico's Claro,Personal, a joint Argentine-Italian company, and US-based Nextel.