Power cuts: this winter, the mobile network could also fall!

The mobile network will also suffer this winter in the event of power cuts. If the power is out for homes, it could also be for your smart phone !

The announcements are becoming more and more pessimistic over the weeks. While EDF announced last month that it was late in its program to restart nuclear reactors, and RTE announced problems for January, it is now up to Orange to sound the alarm.

January will be a difficult month

And for good reason. With the delays recorded by EDF, which will not be able to reach the 45 reactors relaunched on 1^er next January (out of a French nuclear fleet of 56 in total), RTE has revised upwards the risks of voltage on the electricity network for the first month of the year 2023. These are now considered “high”.

Enough to justify the fears expressed by the general manager of Orange Christel Heydemann, for whom these possible power cuts will also mean the (temporary) fall of the mobile network. ” I fear that our fellow citizens will discover that telecom networks depend on electricity “, she was thus alarmed in front of the Economic Affairs Committee of the Senate.

The antennas allowing the broadcasting of telecommunications will also be affected by power cuts, since “ the sites of telecom operators are not, by law on critical networks, considered as having priority “.

You might have electricity, but no mains

Having power at home always will not be a guarantee of network either. The power cuts that could be decided by Enedis would indeed be done “in patches”, i.e. at the level of well-defined sectors.

” There might be situations in which there are
electricity in an apartment, but no mobile network, or the opposite, if the dwelling and the antenna are not in the same area “, thus specified the leader of Orange.

A situation that would have no solution that could be applied urgently. It is thus impossible to install batteries at the level of each French antenna, this operation requiring at least five years of work. Christel Heydemann, however, made a point of bringing a note of optimism during this hearing: “ Orange has greater resilience than its competitors “. Will this be enough?

Source : Le Figaro