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Communications EU Power

Europe Braces For Mobile Network Blackouts (reuters.com) 132

Posted by BeauHD from the contingency-plans dept.
Once unthinkable, mobile phones could go dark around Europe this winter if power cuts or energy rationing knocks out parts of the mobile networks across the region. Reuters reports: Russia's decision to halt gas supplies via Europe's key supply route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the chances of power shortages. In France, the situation is made worse by several nuclear power plants shutting down for maintenance. Telecoms industry officials say they fear a severe winter will put Europe's telecoms infrastructure to the test, forcing companies and governments to try to mitigate the impact. Currently there are not enough back-up systems in many European countries to handle widespread power cuts, four telecoms executives said, raising the prospect of mobile phone outages.

European Union countries, including France, Sweden and Germany, are trying to ensure communications can continue even if power cuts end up exhausting back-up batteries installed on the thousands of cellular antennas spread across their territory. Europe has nearly half a million telecom towers and most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. [...] Telecom gear makers Nokia and Ericsson are working with mobile operators to mitigate the impact of a power shortage. The European telecom operators must review their networks to reduce extra power usage and modernize their equipment by using more power efficient radio designs, the four telecom executives said. To save power, telecom companies are using software to optimize traffic flow, make towers "sleep" when not in use and switch off different spectrum bands. The telecom operators are also working with national governments to check if plans are in place to maintain critical services.

In Germany, Deutsche Telekom has 33,000 mobile radio sites (towers) and its mobile emergency power systems can only support a small number of them at the same time, a company spokesperson said. Deutsche Telekom will use mobile emergency power systems which mainly rely on diesel in the event of prolonged power failures, it said. France has about 62,000 mobile towers, and the industry will not be able to equip all antennas with new batteries, the FFT's president Liza Bellulo said. Accustomed to uninterrupted power supply for decades, European countries usually do not have generators backing up power for longer durations.
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Europe Braces For Mobile Network Blackouts More

Europe Braces For Mobile Network Blackouts

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  • Oh crap. (Score:1, Troll)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 )

    Oh crap. 20-something years ago I spent some time in Italy and France, and already then, those two had largely abandoned copper POTS.

    And so have we here, it just took us a bit longer.

    Maybe that wasn't that smart, in hindsight? Central Offices here had their own (large) generators, but wireless towers rely mainly on batteries.

    I presume it's the same over there?

    No heat, no power, no phones. Europe's gonna be .. interesting this winter.

    And we may not be too far behind, for different reasons. Their bad wint

    • The solution is a more reliable grid and better battery backup for cell towers, not "going back to POTS."

      POTS belongs on the ash heap of history.

    • No heat, no power, no phones. Europe's gonna be .. interesting this winter.

      We are talking about intermittent cuts in worst case scenarios. I bet nothing big will happen, we will see. Winter 2023 may be the real thing with 0 russian gas since somebody destroyed nordstream. It's very funny to think this somebody could be Russia but also USA.

      • Woodcutter is a new up and coming career in Germany.

        In a side note German children are now studying how to leave trails home in the forest that won't get eaten.

      • It's very funny to think this somebody could be Russia but also USA.

        I fail to see how the pipe destruction serves USA at all in any way. It will not increase US gas sales to Europe as they are already as large as possibly can. The only effect is showing how European underwater infrastructure are visible to stealth enemy attacks. Independently who did it, this serves Russia as a new blackmail argument. The only source for accusing USA are declarations from Russian government and pro-Russian social media accounts, which have obvious interest making it look like it's USA. The

        • Creating an all-out-war in Europe would serve the interests of the US Military-Industrial complex, who would make untold billions (trillions, possibly) selling arms to Europe.

          Whether it would be in the security interest of the US is a different question entirely. We (the US) are conveniently out of range.

          • This scenario requires several non-sensical steps.
            1) That Europeans would escalate an energy war to military war. The event did not cost lives, was performed onto a Russian infrastructures, there is zero justification within European laws to escalate war. Everybody knows European politicians are mostly worried about pennies. Escalating war would cost money and not bring back the pipe, cause other expensive damage, while not doing war enables to use money to build solar/wind power.

            2) That the US military wou

          • All out war (World War 3?) will switch everything to war production, so even the very rich will have difficulty getting whatever they want.

            What's the use of having all the money if you can't do anything you want? Or are restricted from going to your favourite holiday spots, etc?

        • I fail to see how the pipe destruction serves USA at all in any way.

          Russia could use nordstream to blackmail Europe, now they can't anymore. It's a win for USA. Also USA has always been against nordstream2. It makes more sense than Russia blowing their main blackmail tools, I can't imagine they are this stupid (but could...). I bet we will have to wait 20-30 years to know...

          • We know that Russia is stupid enough to blow their own blackmail tools, they already did that when they decided to cut the flow of NS2 (instead of randomly reducing it like a good blackmailer would). NS1 was not useful to Russia anymore because Europeans were phasing out gas supply, but the explosion now costs resources to EU navies, as they need to patrol huge areas to secure extensive offshore infrastructures in the North Sea. The black mail started now. Here is the message it sends: "It would be a pity i

            • Nordstream2 has been cancelled by Germany and EU because of Russian invasion. Unless we have proofs coming from EU, we can't believe USA or Russia. It's crazy to think USA implication is a real possibility and not a crazy conspiracy theory.

      • Or they were trying to perform some sort of maintenence on the pipes, and the metric fucktons of methane hydrate plugs that would have formed when they left pressurized methane in the pipes for months on end without flow reacted poorly.

        • Don't know if what you say can happen but it would be hilarious if true, real incident but everyone blame USA or Russia.

          • Look up Lawdog on blogspot. He's got two posts on the issue right now. The explosions on N2 are particularly interesting in their positioning because the first "explosion" was at/near a pipe bend pretty distant from the final 3, exactly where you would see the largest possible water hammer effect if they were finally attempting a controlled depressurization or some other form of maintenance and it took time for the explosion's effects to shake loose a plug further upstream. If you assume the second series

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      It'll be interesting, but I largely think what is going to happen is that people will be told to work from home and offices will be shut down to "just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing"

      Extra clothing layers is cheaper than turning up the thermostat.

    • 20-something years ago I spent some time in Italy and France, and already then, those two had largely abandoned copper POTS.

      That's a shame. Mauviel makes the best copper cookware in the world and they are French.

    • Central Offices here had their own (large) generators, but wireless towers rely mainly on batteries.

      I presume it's the same over there?

      Most stand-alone towers in the US have generators on site. I have built, inspected, or audited thousands of cell sites, and the only ones that didn't have generators were small sites like the kinds hidden in church steeples or similar.

      Central Offices aren't going away and most have generators that will power them for weeks. COs today are packed with fiber optic lines and hardware.

  • Who writes this crap? (Score:4, Informative)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @09:43PM (#62925655)

    Seriously, nobody here is "bracing" for anything. We expect some minor disruptions and a lot of people are not really sure how they are going to pay the rent, but that is basically it.

    • I run, amongst other things, the resilience function for a sizable bank in Europe.

      We are looking seriously at the possibility of brownouts and blackouts nationwide. That does not mean I expect them - but I certainly cannot ignore the possibility. Weâ(TM)ve got contingency plans that we are testing.

      So yeah, you could say that we are bracing for outages.

      • If you do resilience for a sizeable bank in Europe, you should have had contingency plans for that sort of situation decades ago. The financial institutions I did work for 20 years ago all did.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Corbets ( 169101 )

          And presumably they’ve not slipped them in a drawer and forgotten them for the past 20 years, but continued to evolve them and test them, including when the scenarios start to seem more probable than an outside chance.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        You are just updating your business risk management as the regulator requires in such a situation. (One of the things I do is internal audit as a service, mostly for insurances...) You very likely had that risk as an infrastructure risk in there before, just with low likelihood and probably a risk acceptance. Now you are updating that and probably update your BCM plans as well.

        I am not objecting to preparation for outages. There may well be some. In fact, there can always some. But "bracing" implies you exp

    • and a lot of people are not really sure how they are going to pay the rent, but that is basically it.

      Ah no big deal then.

    • Also, when was it unthinkable? Mobile network failures happen.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Oh, it is thinkable. But "bracing for it" means you expect it to actually hit you pretty soon and that is just nonsense.

    • It's the US State Department. You would not believe what a massive Internet trolling operation they're running now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Seriously, nobody here is "bracing" for anything. We expect some minor disruptions and a lot of people are not really sure how they are going to pay the rent, but that is basically it.

      This... and these "minor disruptions" will still be less disruptive than what Americans call "normal service".

      Never been to any country where the mobile network is as spotty as the US... And I'm including quite a few developing nations here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        This... and these "minor disruptions" will still be less disruptive than what Americans call "normal service".
        Never been to any country where the mobile network is as spotty as the US... And I'm including quite a few developing nations here.

        Made me LOL ;-)

        You are correct of course. What I had here in the last 20 years for electricity was 1 localized outage (power came back in about 90 seconds) and one 1 second interruption that took down one of two running computers. That is it.

        Also, as to the phone network, there are emergency plans in place. What happens here is that the police and emergency services drive though the streets and announces where the next place is to get help or report to an emergency. They and emergency services will do incr

  • ... that the average Ukranian would gladly exchange what they are "bracing for" over the next several months with the cell phone concerns of the EU citizens.

    • I am 100% sure that the average Ukranian would gladly exchange what they are "bracing for" over the next several months with the cell phone concerns of the EU citizens.

      They sure do love their whataboutism, but I'm not sure that "You're freezing to death and can't pay for food? Well I'm freezing to death, can't pay for food, and being shot at!" is really the most effective propaganda technique to keep Europe funding the war.

      Proxy wars generally don't cost the west anything, and because of using sanctions as economic warfare this one has evolved from a proxy war to one that's legitimately being felt at home across the globe, by all those who aren't involved in any way. At

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Why stop appeasing Putin now? You should go all the way. Disband the UN and set up Putin as God-Emperor of Earth.
        If whatever he says goes and he's allowed to do anything he like already, because it "might be inconvenient" to stop him. Why not just surrender now and get it over with?
      • Pay now or pay more later. Putin was never really secretive about wanting to restore the Soviet Union, but the invasion of Ukraine laid it bare, if we let him gobble up Ukraine and who knows what else he would only control even MORE of the European energy supply. Enough.

      • Yeah, appeasement of megalomaniacs worked great so far. Chamberlain's memoires are a bestseller after all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Corbets ( 169101 )

        I'm honestly not sure how politicians can justify letting their own people suffer for a war that doesn't involve them at all, or adding massive amounts of debt to their country in an attempt to subsidize energy costs so their businesses don't go under from the costs sent skyrocketing by sanctions.

        A woman getting raped on the street may not involve me, but I sure as hell will step in and address the situation if I see it. Most people have some degree of civic conscience that requires them to make sacrifices on the behalf of others; therefore, the explanation is not so simple as the above section of your post would imply.

        Of course, as other posters have already indicated, there is simple self-interest as well. Stopping Putin at Kiev is better than stopping Putin at Munich, at least as far as the avera

      • > At this point it would have cost everyone less
        > globally to just buy the Ukrainians a new country

        You're thinking too short-term. The last time russia sent the red army marching west, it didn't stop until they had taken over half of Germany. Everyone east of that line suffered horrific abuse and oppression at the Russians' hands. And it took half a century to expel them. That is the future that Putin wants. He's open and on-record in pining for his "good old days" of the Soviet Union and KGB thu

      • Your entire premise is based on the idea that Putin will stop with Ukraine. This is clearly not true, because people said the same thing in 2014 when they annexed Crimea.

        So really the question is: do you want to help Ukraine stop this nonsense where it is, or wait until this nonsense is at your own doorstep at some point in the future?

        Expansionist dictators aren't just going to stop trying to expand.

  • Pepperidge farm remembers (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Remember when the germans laughed at Trump during his speech about energy dependence?

  • So... here's the deal... I work in a super computing center.

    If it means that the telephone network won't operate due to lack of energy, we'll shutdown all non-essential systems. We've already been implementing modules to "right-size our power footprint". Meaning we'll leave things like weather prediction running while shutting down things like genome sequencing not related to emergency cases.

    Just doing that at one supercomputing center can easily free up megawatts... which could run the entire national mobi

    • Unless that's mandated by law, that won't do jack. Because why should I shut down any of my services that make me money?

  • Enough with the cyber BS

  • Literally no one here is concerned about wide spread power outages. The government is making a few discussion to cover what-if scenarios and to ensure they don't happen, but there is literally no discussion anywhere (including Germany) about having to deal with power outages.

  • This article proposes a possible, but improbable, worst-case scenario. There are lots of unlikely worst-case scenarios that we can contemplate and worry about. This one, where Europe experiences terrible destructive power outages during the Winter, is so predictable that all the efforts are being made to avoid it. I'm willing to bet money that most Europeans will not experience a single power outage during the entire Winter.

  • Mobile phones being down will just force us to use those landlines we all gave up on.

    There are many challenges ahead but it looks like if we can tough it out in our own way we'll mostly manage. The short term IMO is the next 2-3 years.

    There has been some serious over reliance on Russia for energy and that's the fault of policy maker its come back to bite everyone will poor planning in the ass. The UK, France, Germany - Europe and the world over.

    The fact Russia is willing to let Europe suffer as punis
  • I wonder how many of the mobile towers are also suitable to accommodate grid level battery storage. These sites are often in close proximity to where the power needs are. Could make for interesting partnership which helps to keep both power and communications on.
  • Time to put small modular reactors at cell sites.
    • Actually thermo-nuclear batteries, like what powers deep space probes, would be enough to keep most cell sites running.
  • Woke & green, everything should be ok, right? ldiots! Killing nuclear, coal, etc...just because they are stupid enough to think that MAN can change the climate. George Carlin said it best... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

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