Gas supply crisis will lead to power struggle with casualties
The lights will go out on base stations all over Europe this winter as power cuts become a knock-on effect of the war in Ukraine. Energy rationing will be the inevitable result of Russia’s decision to halt gas supplies and they mysterious destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Whatever the causes are, the end result will be that a severe winter will test Europe’s telecoms infrastructure and force operators and governments to try to mitigate – rather than obviate – the impact, according to a Reuters report.
In France, the crisis was worsened as several nuclear power plants had to be shut down for maintenance. With no back-up systems telcos in many European countries can’t handle widespread power cuts, four telecoms executives told Reuters, raising the real prospect of mobile phone blackouts. European Union countries, including France, Sweden and Germany, are trying to ensure communications can continue if power exhausted back-up batteries die, leaving the cellular antenna in their field powerless.
In France electricity distributor Enedis proposed power cuts of up to two hours in a worst case scenario, two sources told Reuters. The French government, telecoms operators and Enedis, a unit of state-controlled utility EDF held talks on the issue in summer. The French Federation of Telecoms (FFT), a lobby group representing Orange, Bouygues Telecom and Altice’s SFR, put the spotlight on Enedis for being unable to exempt antennas from the power cuts.
Enedis told Reuters it could isolate sections of the network to supply priority customers, such as hospitals, key industrial installations and the military and that it was up to local authorities to add telecoms operators infrastructure to the list of priority customers. “Maybe we’ll improve our knowledge on the matter by this winter, but it’s not easy to isolate a mobile antenna from the rest of the network,” said a French finance minister.
Mobile network operators (MNOs) in Sweden and Germany have also badgered their governments over potential electricity shortages. Swedish telecom regulator PTS is working with MNOs and other government agencies to find solutions, it said. That includes ‘war gaming’ scenarios about the effects of electricity rationing. PTS is financing the purchase of transportable fuel stations and mobile base stations that connect to mobile phones to handle longer power outages, a PTS spokesperson said.
The Italian telecoms lobby told Reuters it wants the mobile network to be excluded from any power cut or energy saving stoppage and will raise this with Italy’s new government. Power outages put electronic components at risk of failing if subjected to abrupt interruptions, said telecoms lobby chief Massimo Sarmi.
Equipment makers Nokia and Ericsson refused to comment about their efforts with MNOs to mitigate the impact of a power shortage. However, one executive spoke off the record and said that MNOs must review their networks to find ways to cut extra power usage and modernise their equipment with more power efficient radio designs.
The MNOs themselves are saving power by using software to optimise traffic flow, make towers “sleep” when not in use and switch off different spectrum bands. They are also working with national governments to check if plans are in place to maintain critical services.
In Germany, Deutsche Telekom has 33,000 towers and its mobile emergency power systems can only support a small number of them at the same time, so it 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.
Since Europe has not experience power supply failures for decades, there aren’t enough generators to backing up power for long. “We are a bit spoiled maybe in large parts of Europe where electricity is pretty stable and good,” a telecom industry executive told Reuters. “The investments in the energy storage area have maybe been less than in some other countries.”