More electricity, more mobile network: a winter in the Stone Age?
This winter, it will cut
To protect the French electricity network during the winter, the government is working on “local load shedding”. An innocent term to say “power cuts of one to two hours” in a specific area. During this period, all power will be turned off except for sites covered by a decree of the July 5, 1990. Thus, apart from 14,000 so-called “priority” sites (hospitals, prisons, emergency services, defence, etc.), all the rest of the users of the French network are concerned by these risks of cuts.
Electricity: risk of cuts at peak times this winter https://t.co/rW1XIX4NnU pic.twitter.com/yf33BuJ4Jd
— LCI (@LCI) November 22, 2022
These cuts will take place during time slots, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., for a maximum duration of 2 hours. The users concerned will be notified between 3 days before and the day before the cut, at 5 p.m. at the latest. We can count on the application EcoWatt for precise “weather”. Who says more current, logically says more internet, but also more mobile network.
More access to emergency numbers
Heard by the Senate, the CEO of Orange Christel Heydemann has therefore warned: load shedding will impact mobile network towers, directly impacting the telecommunications capacities of your network. If your territory is affected by a cut, your mobile will be cut off from all connections over the period. But this will also concern emergency numbers.
🔴 Christel Heydemann, the CEO of Orange, was heard before the Senate on November 30 and alerted to the risks of mobile network cuts in France this winter which could temporarily prevent access to emergency numbers! pic.twitter.com/1TWd7UDw18
— Celine d’Arc (@pam33771) November 30, 2022
If mobile services are turned off for two hours, there will be no access to emergency numbers. This then is the situation that awaits us for the beginning of 2023, because the telecommunications networks are not considered a priority by the decree of 1990. An aberration reinforced by the provision by plates of the electrical network. Thus, your home can be connected to a different plate from the mobile tower in your neighborhood. This may result in scenes where the mobile networks are working, but the light is not, or vice versa.
EcoWatt, this admission of weakness…
January is going to be a long month
Faced with the risk of network overload, Enedis will thus be led to carry out localized rotating cuts throughout the territory. Even if it is a hypothesis, fears about the solidity of the network this winter are growing day by day. A situation that will therefore have an impact on our daily lives, including our smartphones. The networks had already been targeted by demands for savings, with the government’s request to ISPs to cut internet boxes during periods of inactivity.
A winter that promises to be harsh for the French electricity network. However, last September, TEN promised to be confident about the infrastructure’s ability to withstand the shock. What to lose his Latin.
