Spain To Require Carriers To Keep Mobile Networks Live During Power Outages (reuters.com) 108
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Spain will require mobile networks to have backup systems that maintain connectivity when power outages occur. Per a royal decree that will be approved by the end of 2026, mobile network operators (MNOs) and infrastructure companies will need to install batteries or other backups to keep service active for at least four hours during a blackout.
The mobile network rules will apply to businesses that serve at least 500,000 users or generate upwards of 50 million euros ($56.9 million) in annual revenue. The decree will stipulate that half of the population will need to be covered by this failsafe within the first year, then 65 percent in the second year and three quarters in the third.
[...] The decree will require other key infrastructure elements to remain up and running for a certain period after a power outage. For instance, control centers that could impact all of Spain if they were to go offline will need to remain in service for at least 24 hours. Emergency call centers will also need to have plans in place to maintain operations, as Reuters notes. The move is in response to the widespread blackout across the Iberian peninsula in 2025, which left more than 50 million people without power. Experts called it "the most severe and unprecedented blackout that had occurred in Europe in the past 20 years."
The mobile network rules will apply to businesses that serve at least 500,000 users or generate upwards of 50 million euros ($56.9 million) in annual revenue. The decree will stipulate that half of the population will need to be covered by this failsafe within the first year, then 65 percent in the second year and three quarters in the third.
[...] The decree will require other key infrastructure elements to remain up and running for a certain period after a power outage. For instance, control centers that could impact all of Spain if they were to go offline will need to remain in service for at least 24 hours. Emergency call centers will also need to have plans in place to maintain operations, as Reuters notes. The move is in response to the widespread blackout across the Iberian peninsula in 2025, which left more than 50 million people without power. Experts called it "the most severe and unprecedented blackout that had occurred in Europe in the past 20 years."
Full Circle (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else remember picking up the phone when the power went out and calling your friends to ask if their power was out too?
Finally Spanish kids of today will be able to do that too.
Re:Full Circle (Score:5, Informative)
Ever see the giant batteries at your local Central Office that made that work?
Something like this:
https://www.facebook.com/photo... [facebook.com]
Re:Full Circle (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember that, but things have improved a lot. A cell tower only takes 1-8kW, and we have drastically better batteries.
Plus, a lot fewer land lines, so need to keep the towers up for emergency services.
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we have drastically better batteries.
There exist better batteries (more capacity, better charging characteristics). However, last time I was in a CO was a week ago. They still had big lucite tanks with oversized lead acid batteries. I don't think the newer battery chemistry is what you really need for a big stationary UPS like that. They don't use NMC, LIFO, LIPO, or other advanced chemistry because they have different needs (durability, service life, weight doesn't matter much).
Re:Full Circle (Score:4)
With lead-acid and extended run times, volume starts mattering again. Especially if one is trying to retrofit cell towers that might not have had significant UPS capability before.
In addition, the lead-acid batteries in this use can last for a long time, and perhaps more importantly, the UPS equipment is set up for lead-acid. It's cheaper to replace the lead-acid batteries than it is to switch to a newer chemistry, even if LFP is getting down to lead-acid prices per kWh.
For a NEW install, I'd very much look at newer chemistries. Though NMC would be low on the consideration list. As you said, need durability not low mass/volume, and lower cost is always good.
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A cell tower only takes 1-8kW, and we have drastically better batteries.
Only... The high end of that is 192kWh of required storage making "only" a storage system that is 20x the size of a typical home battery installation. Given many cells these days are shoehorned into very tight spaces this "only" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. You'll still either need a lot of space or specialised expensive high density batteries (two large EVs worth).
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I did see those batteries once, as a young child. It was pretty impressive. My memory - possibly not reliable after six decades - is of cylindrical structures larger and taller than those in the photo you linked.
I'm not sure I ever knew what chemistry the CO batteries used - do you happen to know? I remember thinking that they were just bigger versions of the flashlight batteries and ignition cells I played with, but I realize now that they must have been rechargeable.
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Sealed lead acid (in the pic)?
Didn't they used to use some sort of glass battery?
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The old school batteries in the CO were Lead Acid, not sealed, regular maintenance required. Each was a 2V cell, 24 of them in series to make 48VDC battery, at something like 2000 amps. Not sure about cells that picture, just a clear example I could find quickly.
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Primarily needed to supply the loop power for POTS circuits. And usually enough capacity to get the diesel getsets started.
My telephone (and Internet) come in over fiber to the network terminator. Which has its own battery.
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Yeah its all different now. They gave up on copper lines a long time ago in most places. So few landlines compared to cell phones now. Its fun to run across my buggy-whip skills once in a while.
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They gave up on copper lines a long time ago in most places.
Not so much. Only last year, we had a rash of meth addicts cutting down copper telephone lines for the copper. Major problem for people living out in the suburbs, since cell coverage is crap around here. During the Covid lockdowns, when they closed the public libraries, they found out how many people depended on their WiFi. WalMart and a few other retail outlets and malls put repeaters out in the parking lots. People would pull in, sit in their cars and get business done that way.
They only began pulling do
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Gave up on copper to install fiber, right.
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Anyone else remember picking up the phone when the power went out and calling your friends to ask if their power was out too?
Remember decades ago we had a hurricane and power was out for about 5 days. The streets were a mess.. trees and power lines down everywhere. Yet when you picked up the phone there was still tone and the green backlight still lit up.
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That's why the p
Re: Full Circle (Score:3)
Re: Full Circle (Score:2)
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Certainly NOT for Katrina.
Hell for at least a MONTH after Katrina, no matter where you were in the US you could not receive a phone call if you had a NOLA 504 phone number.
But for some reason texts would work.....so, I learned how to text then.
Phones were dead in the city f
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I still had 4G phone signal for an hour or two after the blackout. When the power hadn't come back after about half an hour I looked online and discovered that it was a national event rather than just my block of flats.
Re:Full Circle (Score:4)
All mobile towers have battery backup. It's a question of time. 24 hours is a lot and I wonder if the people who thought about this considered how achievable this was, especially if your network has a lot of micro cells. A typical mobile phone tower uses about as much power as an induction stove top. You may need somewhere up to 100kWh of storage to get a cell tower to ride through a 24 hour power outage.
For reference those home batteries you see are typically 10-15kWh, so you'll need quite a bit of space or some very careful engineering (a large EV has a battery pack around this size).
Re:Full Circle (Score:5, Informative)
All mobile towers have battery backup. It's a question of time. 24 hours is a lot and I wonder if the people who thought about this considered how achievable this was, especially if your network has a lot of micro cells.
24 hours is for critical infrastructure, "Control centers" as the summary puts it. For cell towers, they only mandated 4 hours which should be a lot easier.
Re:Full Circle (Score:4, Interesting)
And four hours is nowhere near enough. That's less than the average power outage duration in California, for example (4 hours, 16 minutes). And the fact that this was in response to a blackout that lasted days makes me really wonder what they are thinking, unless the assumption is that they will then scramble to bring generators online to provide continuous service. Four hours might work for landline service, where you have one central office per city, but with cell towers spread out everywhere, that doesn't seem nearly as practical.
In an actual emergency, having only four hours of backup could be grim. Mind you, other countries generally aren't any better, but four hours is still woefully inadequate, IMO.
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Either you're confusing it with a different blackout or this needs clarification. The power was back to 99% of users after about 18 hours, and although I can't access the primary sources I see citations that it was fully restored within 24 hours. Your main point still stands.
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I live in Rio Dell, CA. When we had our last significant quake the Verizon tower went down after a few hours and was out for the extent of the outage, almost 3 days. They promised to bring in a generator to power the tower and then... just didn't bother.
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Either you're confusing it with a different blackout or this needs clarification. The power was back to 99% of users after about 18 hours, and although I can't access the primary sources I see citations that it was fully restored within 24 hours. Your main point still stands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
12:33:24 CEST – grid collapsed completely, the HVDC between France and Spain tripped.
...
00:22 CEST – grid fully restored in Portugal.
04:00 CEST – grid fully restored in Spain.
Looks like 15 1/2 hours for full power back in Spain
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Okay, the news article I read said that it took days to fully restore everything, but that may have been a few fringe places or something.
Either way, mandating 4 hours of backup in response to an event that lasted 15+ hours still seems more than a bit shortsighted.
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The Spanish Wikipedia article does say that some comms took three days to restore, because after the power came back the configurations of some devices, I presume routers, had been lost. Specifically it cites newspaper articles about remote assistance buttons, but the journalists either didn't understand the technical details or didn't want to explain in detail. So the misunderstanding is probably that it took a few days for everything to get back to normal, even though the actual blackout lasted 18 hours o
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4h is enough to confirm for everyone: oh, noes, all the rest of the country has the same problem. And start collecting water, fueling the car, and consider an escape route/gathering point.
4h is farking big difference versus 0h ....
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4 hours won't cover the average outage, but it's long enough to prepare for it.
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And four hours is nowhere near enough. That's less than the average power outage duration in California, for example (4 hours, 16 minutes).
Spain is not California. The average power outage in Spain lasts only a few minutes to an our tops and is typically quite localised. There's a legal requirement in Spain for the HV transmission grid to have a reliability that doesn't exceed a loss of service of more than 15 minutes. That's why the 2025 outage was such a big deal. Your claim that other countries aren't better than California is bullshit.
Also 4 hours is plenty of time to put in place emergency management. The goal shouldn't be always to have
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Spain is not California. The average power outage in Spain lasts only a few minutes to an our tops and is typically quite localised. There's a legal requirement in Spain for the HV transmission grid to have a reliability that doesn't exceed a loss of service of more than 15 minutes. That's why the 2025 outage was such a big deal. Your claim that other countries aren't better than California is bullshit.
There are two types of outages. Widespread outages at the transmission level are fairly rare (almost everywhere). Outages at the local level, like substation failures, overhead line damage from car accidents/wind/ice, etc. are not. It doesn't take a massive regional outage to make cell phones unavailable. In urban areas, cell towers cover a radius of only a couple of miles, typically, with lots of dead spots when even a single tower goes down. One bad traffic accident, and thousands of people could los
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Again Spain is not California. A traffic accident is not going to knock out anyone's power in a country where a massive amount of critical infrastructure is protected and underground. Even on a local level the average duration of an outage is 30minutes largely because competent power system design makes it such that you don't need to care if part of your network is taken offline. You just "internet" the problem and route around the broken link. It's why ring topologies are so prevalent on local levels.
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The *average* blackout duration for Madrid (CAIDI) is 1.6 hours [icrepq.com]. While you wouldn't expect a large percentage of outages to exceed four hours if the average is just under half of that, infrequent isn't zero, and when you're talking about critical emergency infrastructure like telephones, you really should want the outage durations for those services to be zero.
And even if the average really were just 30 minutes, the point remains that this was done in response to an outage that lasted way more than 4 hour
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Maybe time to put generators there instead of battery backup. I'd say solar or wind, but those both take more space up and not all towers have all this spare space around them for that. A diesel generator would probably work best.
But this is Europe we're talking about. They'd rather die then use AC, so I don't know if they'd bother to use diesel to keep the cell network up or not. Greta says to use a string and a tin can.
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Maybe time to put generators there instead of battery backup.
Definitely. Standards shouldn't specify what kind of backup, just the duration. If they want to use batteries, fine. Generators, fine. Flywheel storage, fine. Compressed air storage, fine. If you can get more than 24 hours of storage, add some solar, and you now have basically an unlimited duration. This is, of course, the ideal answer, where practical.
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They'd rather die then use AC
That's a dumb comment. No one would rather die than use AC and the AC use is on the rise everywhere. The problem is houses in Europe are designed for historical European weather, just like houses in Texas are designed for Texan weather. The problem is always a case of adapting. Virtually everyone who is dying because of heat is not in a position to install AC usually for some combination of being unable to afford it, or being unable to get it installed (regulations are a problem, apartment design is a probl
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A better reference would be automotive batteries. 100kWh is on the larger end, but still fits within a typical European mid size car.
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A better reference would be automotive batteries. 100kWh is on the larger end, but still fits within a typical European mid size car.
I drive an ICE car, you insensitive clod! ;-)
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We have the same/similar laws in Germany, like "since forever".
The purpose is to have at least emergency response being able to communicate.
Land lines for example: always had back up power since world war I. Unless the line itself was broken, the phone on the other end was powered by the phone connection, and had at least talking capabilities to the next switch station.
I do not know how the law is for individual towers ... but the whole infrastructure has to be able to last 48 hours after a power outage ...
cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
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It ultimately won't cost the companies anything.
Their customers, however...
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Everything is funded by customers or taxpayers...sometimes both.
Re:cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
What will the cost of not doing this be to: customers, emergency services, ... ?
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How do you, an ordinary person, call the EMS if your mobile 'phone does not work because the cell tower has run our of electricity ?
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And after 4 hours and 1 minutes, you'll be in the same boat. Guess you are dead.
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At least with US pricing, a typical 4G cell site would only require a handful of UPS'es, a 20kW+ standby generator (diesel, natural gas or propane), and a decent sized tank for fuel - which in most places would cost under $45,000 USD installed. With bulk pricing for multiple sites and being able to share install teams, that price probably goes down considerably.
Not to say it won't be a cost, but if that resiliency is used to save just one life, it is well worth it, IMO.
Four hours isn't enough (Score:4, Insightful)
A minimum of about 8 hours is more realistic for cell towers and 72 hours for core network is what you need for reliability and recovery. 24 hours for the towers is better, but difficult to achieve for many sites.
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A minimum of about 8 hours is more realistic for cell towers and 72 hours for core network is what you need for reliability and recovery. 24 hours for the towers is better, but difficult to achieve for many sites.
I think 24 hours should have been a design criterion in the first place. If something is to replace landlines, then to me it feels obvious we couldn’t skimp on the reliability/uptime aspect.
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24 Hours is better of course, but for a "small" 5G tower that is about 125 kWh and a full size tower twice that. That is about 80 gallons of diesel or 1.5 tons of batteries. The way the 5G networks are set up it is a big ask, even if it is needed as emergency infrastructure.
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24 Hours is better of course, but for a "small" 5G tower that is about 125 kWh and a full size tower twice that. That is about 80 gallons of diesel or 1.5 tons of batteries. The way the 5G networks are set up it is a big ask, even if it is needed as emergency infrastructure.
I do understand the complexity, but then at least GSM infrastructure should have been kept, or even landlines to some extent. If 5G isn’t up to the task something else is needed to keep the society running in emergencies. Basically the question is: what is cheaper, backup or parallel infrastructure?
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If 5G isn’t up to the task something else is needed to keep the society running in emergencies.
This is the one area where satellite service makes sense, IMO.
Expecting enough batteries/power at each tower to handle 24-72 hours of power outage is asking way too much; Too much as in, we don't want to foot that bill financially, environmentally, or the maintenance needs. 4hr seems like plenty of time. If one has critical needs, they can setup their fallbacks during that time. One can organize with neighbors in that time to find emergency comms (ex. the neighbor who has satellite service or the local ham
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I think 24 hours should have been a design criterion in the first place. If something is to replace landlines, then to me it feels obvious we couldn’t skimp on the reliability/uptime aspect.
Based on what? Where did you pull the number 24 from, and have you consider how much storage you need to keep a 5kW tower running for that long (especially before lithium batteries became common).
What do you achieve in 24 hours that you can't achieve in 4 hours? Why not 48 hours? Have a think about this one carefully and consider what you do in an outage, consider what needs to be done to maintain contact, consider what the typical outage duration is and then justify why you think 24 hours is required.
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Based on what? Where did you pull the number 24 from, and have you consider how much storage you need to keep a 5kW tower running for that long (especially before lithium batteries became common).
What do you achieve in 24 hours that you can't achieve in 4 hours? Why not 48 hours? Have a think about this one carefully and consider what you do in an outage, consider what needs to be done to maintain contact, consider what the typical outage duration is and then justify why you think 24 hours is required.
Based on that it was 24 hours for landlines here (in Sweden). They just dropped that to much less for cellular because of the reasons you state. That was fine as long as there was both, but then the landlines went obsolete and the requirement was silently dropped. There are quite a few remote places here that gets severely affected when there are outages.
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Emergency response window for major disaster is usually around 4-8 hours for initial mobilization. Stabilization takes about 24 hours. If backup power is still needed then deploying a generator or refueling in that timeframe is feasible. Lack of effective turns an emergency into chaos and emergency response teams are usually the "second responders"-- people on the ground need to be effective without special equipment.
Spanish Carriers (Score:2)
Yes the Spanish Navy has A carrier, the Juan Carlos I
But they aren't going to replace the AV8 Harriers with F35B's .
standard? (Score:2)
You mean they somehow didnâ(TM)t before? (Score:4, Interesting)
In all nordic countries that has been a requirement since forever
Re:You mean they somehow didnâ(TM)t before? (Score:5, Informative)
Nordic:
* Finland: Requirement for 4G is 15 min https://www.kyberturvallisuusk... [kyberturva...skeskus.fi]
* Norway: used to be 2-4 hours; was increased to 8-24 hours after the Spanish blackout https://www.telenor.com/who-we... [telenor.com]
Non-Nordic:
* Netherlands (as comparison): These people say the network crashes in 4-8 hours https://www.localmesh.nl/en/co... [localmesh.nl]
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No it hasn't been, and all cell towers have battery backup already virtually everywhere including Spain. 24hours is a LONG time. We're talking up to a 100kWh battery pack at every cell tower. In many places there isn't even the space to put these.
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No it hasn't been, and all cell towers have battery backup already virtually everywhere including Spain. 24hours is a LONG time. We're talking up to a 100kWh battery pack at every cell tower. In many places there isn't even the space to put these.
Just curious here, as I'm not very familiar with the management of cell towers. Would it be feasible under emergency circumstances to reduce the transmit power to, say, 25 percent of normal? That would reduce the coverage area and leave a lot of folks without service, but would still leave a significant area WITH service, and would roughly quadruple the uptime.
I'm thinking that people could at least move around until they picked up a bar's worth of signal to make critical calls. Am I missing something?
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It's a neat idea but you're trading one group vs another in that scenario. The better question would be, should there be emergency preparedness in place? You don't need to be labelled a disaster prepper to have a basic plan in place.
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To extend that idea, tell me right now what you would do if there was a fire in your house. What is your "plan", don't make something up, tell me your plan, and tell me your plan-B if plan-A isn't an accessible exit strategy.
There's little point in gold plating infrastructure for people who are likely to perish when anything goes even slightly wrong right now.
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Grab my cat and my go-bag, and get out.... assuming that the fire is larger than what an extinguisher can handle. I guess the extinguisher would be Plan-A technically, but my first thought is the plan-B grab-and-go. I have food/water, cat food, cat harness/leash, clothes, shoes, and cash in the bag.
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That you have an extinguisher puts you in the top 1% of preparedness. The go-bag maybe in the top 1% of that 1% prepared group. Kudos.
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Re: You mean they somehow didnâ(TM)t before? (Score:3)
Same in Belgium, it's a requirement for all carriers
First make it work when there is no outage (Score:3)
Baby steps.
Interesting (Score:2)
I can't remember the last time I saw a cell tower without a generator at the base.
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I can't remember the last time I saw a cell tower without a generator at the base.
When's the last time you saw a cell tower located on a ridgeline? Yeah, the tower I regularly walk by while getting my lunch has a generator, but the one that was out near my home for 3 days after the last significant quake clearly doesn't.
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Oh look, modded down by a clown, it must be a day that ends in y.
I know the tower near my home that I normally get signal from doesn't have a generator because it went out after the batteries ran out when we had our last quake, and Verizon promised to bring in a generator but didn't. They wouldn't need to bring one in if it were already there.
I know the tower near my work has a generator because I can see it. I could poke it with a stick through the cyclone fence.
There's a bunch of trolls on here who are ma
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There's a bunch of trolls on here who are mad that I know things. It's very fucking weird.
Indeed. And these idiots are getting bolder. It is like they are proud of not understanding or knowing things and they want everybody to join their dysfunctionality.
Re: Interesting (Score:2)
Whatever, Russian bot.
Anonymous cowards don't get to get treated like humans.
Re: Interesting (Score:2)
So you have been up close to the towers on ridge lines and you still think they have generators? You're lying about literally everything. Typical coward shit.
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I can. The 5G cell sites in town here are little boxes up on about every third street light pole. There are no manholes or enclosures at the pole base. And I'd bet that they even tap their power off the street light circuit.
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Most of the cells near me aren't actually stand-alone towers. They are boxes with some electronics and an antenna sticking out mounted to the top/side of a building or other existing platform. Mostly these are just repeaters that improve service in an area -microcells within the larger cell.
When there is a power outage, these microcells run off their batteries for a few hours. When they run down, there is only service from the larger towers with their dedicated generators -and the service degrades signif
I'm surprised this wasn't already required (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the USA anyway, cellular service has been considered "critical infrastructure" for quite some time now, mostly due to the decline of landlines. 9-1-1 having high availability has been legally required for a long time, and those requirements shifted to the cellular network as people ditched their land-lines for cell phones at home. So all the towers have short-term (15+ minute) UPS's and a gas generator that auto starts, with requirements to run periodic tests.
The other part of it though is the towers nowadays require internet access to function. We had a massive storm system move through the area a few years ago with close to tornado-speed "straight-line winds" that took out a huge amount of above-ground internet infrastructure, rendering cell towers functionally disabled despite giving out full bars. There were a few lines still up but everyone's home internet was either down or spotty, and it was hard to get a cell call to connect. Was llke that for 2-3 weeks, really annoying.
So, power's not the only thing that needs to be protected to keep cellular service working.
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High data rate meshing requires directional antennas pointed at other nodes, unlike the more broad-beamed bay antennas the towers use for cellular access. Adding several dishes and a bunch of expensive hardware to each tower would dramatically increase tower cost and maintenance.
It's much cheaper to just run a network drop off a nearby pole or trench a line to the nearest fiber vault. Even the towers out along the open highways tend to get fiber trenched to them rather than dishes networking them together
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I have seen satellite dishes at the base of isolated cell towers, though I have no idea what they were being used for.
One big drawback for satellite networking is the delay it adds to the transmissions, to travel up to the satellite and get sent back down to a ground station. This delay probably wouldn't be tolerated by a cell phone user, especially if they were talking to another cell phone which would double the delay a second time.
There's also a bandwidth issue at the satellite, if you want to do that w
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Latency to LEO is not a dealbreaker for backup usage. 25-50 ms for Starlink.
Granted, your issue about bandwidth still stands and seems hard to fix. They form virtual cells on the ground with beamforming, but I don't know how many satellites are in view of a city at the same time to divy it up.
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critical infrastructure
Back in the old days, critical service did not include typical residential or business customers. I have an antique CO annunciator panel with a couple of switches on the front that were used to drop all "Class B" and "Class C" lines. Reserving resources for inter-agency communications (police, fire, hospital).
It would not surprise me if this function had not been ported to cell service. Your phone might handshake with a tower. But if you are not on the critical service whitelist, you can't connect a call.
Good requirement (Score:1)
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Networks need to be disaster-tolerant (Score:3)
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I believe they have since changed that configuration
Understatement. Landline infrastructure is nothing like it was in the 80s, even if you do still plug your phone into a wall. Call setup times have changed drastically over the years. It used to require actual meaningful processing to switch landlines. These days not so much, the same goes for cell towers where call setup times have been reduced to milliseconds specifically to enable things like PTT over 5G.
Why phone carriers and not power companies? Easy: (Score:3)
In Spain, power companies are untouchable - remember the power outage which took the entire electrical network down for almost two days several month ago? Well, no one has been blamed for it.The reason is very clear: When high-rank politicians retire from politics, they are hired as "consultants" by these electricity companies getting big bucks for doing essentially nothing (we call it "revolving doors"). Therefore, politicians are very careful of not bothering their "retirement angels". Approving a law which would force the electricity companies to spend money in safeguards, redundant systems, etc., might put their "golden retirement" in jeopardy.
This happens since the moment the ex-president Felipe González (supposedly "socialist") privatised the main power companies in Spain... and then became part of the Board of one of them.
Telephone operators, on the other hand, are not as involved in politics as power companies are, so they are more "vulnerable" to laws which force them to comply with minimum standards of service as they don't have a way of "retaliate" later.
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In Spain, power companies are untouchable - remember the power outage which took the entire electrical network down for almost two days several month ago? Well, no one has been blamed for it.
Funny you mention that one. Firstly Spain has an insanely reliable power system. The average yearly outage of the HV grid is only 6 seconds and most customers don't see the results of that. Secondly why do you mention power companies? Scroll to page 452 https://eepublicdownloads.blob... [windows.net] of the official report to see that *EVERYONE* had a hand in contributing to the power outage. There's no one group that fucked up that you can blame here. When you're done reading the nearly 500 pages come back to me and tel
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Thank you. I was there, and it was about 8 hours, not "almost two days".
Meshcore (Score:2)
I'm familiar with the backup power design of some of the cell towers where I live.
Let's just say I'm also learning how to build solar Meshcore repeaters and placing them on appropriate hilltops where I can.
You can Royal Decree anything but don't bet your life on it.
Also nobody likes to mention that the big Spanish overvolt grid crash coincided with the arrival of a very large CME. We mustn't rile the natives.
DO IT ANYWAY (Score:1)
hahahahahhaa
Probably not the small towers (Score:2)
I can't imagine every single tower will need to meet the power requirement.... Most larger tower can at least provide fringe signal where small towers are deploy to help fill in. That's enough to get some calls through. esp the stupid short-range 5G thing, what a waste that is.