It was once unthinkable, but now we could be without mobiles in Europe this winter if power cuts or rationing of energy supply «hits» parts of mobile networks in the region.
Russia's decision to stop gas flows through the main route after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, has increased the chances of power outages.
In France, as reported by Reuters, the situation has been made worse by the closure of many nuclear power plants for maintenance.
Telecommunications industry officials say they fear that a severe winter will put Europe's telecoms infrastructure to the test, forcing companies and governments to try to mitigate the impact.
There are currently not many support systems in several European countries that can handle widespread power outages, according to four telecoms executives, increasing the possibility of blackouts on mobile phones as well.
The countries of the European Union, including the France, Sweden and Germany, are trying to ensure that communications can continue even if power cuts end up exhausting the spare batteries installed in the thousands of mobile phone antennas spread across their territory.
Europe has almost half a million telecom towers and most of them have back-up batteries that last about 30 minutes to power the mobile phone antennas.
France
In France, a project proposed by the electricity distributor Enedis, includes possible power cuts of up to two hours in the worst-case scenario, two sources familiar with the matter said.
General blackouts will only affect parts of the country on a rotating basis. Essential services like hospitals, police and government will not be affected, the sources said.
Enedis said in a statement to Reuters that all regular customers are treated equally in case of extraordinary holidays.
It also said that it has been able to isolate parts of the network to provide priority customers such as hospitals, key industrial facilities and the military, and that it is up to local authorities to add telecom operators' infrastructure to the priority customer list.
Sweden, Germany and Italy
Telecommunications companies in Sweden and Germany have also expressed concerns about possible electricity shortages in their governments.
The Swedish telecommunications regulator PTS working with telecommunications operators and other government agencies to find solutions. This includes discussions about what would happen if electricity is rationed
PTS is funding the purchase of transportable fuel stations and mobile base stations linked to mobile phones to cope with longer power outages, a PTS spokesman said.
The Italian lobby of telecommunications told Reuters that he wants the mobile network to be excluded from any power outage or power saving outage and will discuss it with the new Italian government.
Mobile phone makers Nokia and Ericsson are working with mobile phone companies to mitigate the impact of a power shortage, three sources familiar with the matter said. Both companies declined to comment.
In Germany, the German Telekom has 33,000 mobile towers and its mobile emergency systems can only support a small number of them at a time, a company spokesman said.
Deutsche Telekom will use mobile emergency power systems that are mainly diesel-based in the event of prolonged power outages.
