A cold winter is awaiting mobile networks and phones in Europe

Alfonso Maruccia

Posts: 950   +293
Staff
TL;DR: The coming energy crisis could bring mobile Internet to a halt in many European countries. Plans are being considered to weather the storm, but Europe would likely suffer from its own success in bringing reliable electricity to its citizens.

A conjunction of power cuts and energy rationing plans could make mobile Internet unreliable and unavailable in Europe. Winter is coming and according to sources from within the industry, everybody knows the market will face a lot of issues. As a consequence of Russia's decision to stop gas supplies via Europe's key supply routes, both industries and governments are now scrambling to find potential solutions to the issue.

The alarms stem directly from telecom industry sources, who are fearful of the impact on the mobile infrastructure in Europe's biggest countries. According to four unnamed telecom executives quoted by Reuters, right now there aren't enough backup systems to account for widespread power cuts.

In Europe, there are half a million mobile towers and most of them are equipped with battery backup systems that can last up to 30 minutes. A plan devised by Enedis, a state-owned French company that manages low and medium voltage power distribution over 1,300,000 km of lines, takes into account potential power outages lasting up to two hours in worst-case scenarios.

Enedis and telecom operators had talks with the French government about the energy market over the summer, but the distribution utility was unable to spare cell towers from general blackouts. In Enedis' plans, mobile Internet is not considered an essential service like hospital, police and government facilities where power cuts would be avoided.

In Sweden, telecom regulator PTS is trying to avoid widespread connectivity outages by financing the purchase of transportable fuel stations and mobile base stations that could work in place of unavailable cell towers to let smartphones and mobile devices connect to the Internet.

Germany's Deutsche Telekom has 33,000 mobile radio towers to feed power to, and the company will use emergency systems relying on diesel in cases of prolonged outages. In Italy, the head of telecoms lobby Asstel Massimo Sarmi will ask the country's new government to exclude mobile networks from any possible energy saving plan.

At this point, the situation doesn't seem to be very clear but Europe will likely suffer from its own success in keeping the continent's energy infrastructure efficient and reliable. One source from the telecom industry said Europe is "a bit spoiled" in that regard, so there weren't as many investments in energy storage solutions as in other parts of the world.

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This is not only the fault of Russia but of myopic EU legislators trying to cram "green energy" down their throats and not taking the time to reach ANY form of energy independence. The USA is next up where the forces of evil are trying to force green on the American people regardless of the consequences.
 
this is not the full EU , we're getting our gas from Algeria and Norway, and almost all our electricity is from nuclear reactors ... almost all this BS is sensationalism and clickBait, you'll see this winter ...
Why wait? The horror stories are already pouring out, we've seen those 9000 euro electric bills.

Frances energy is mostly nuclear. The rest of west Europe thought it would be a brilliant idea to move to natural gas generation. D'oh! Now Germany is debating if they want to keep 2 of their recently decommissioned nuke plants open a little longer, rather then shut them down immediately. Sure sounds like you got some good nuke power, LMFAO.
LOL, that sarcasm?
USSR former slave colonies, like Baltic states, screamed at EU for ages, only to be called crybabies.
It's also a reference to Trump, who told the EU it was a bad idea only to be told he was a not-see for criticizing Brussels.
 
this is not the full EU , we're getting our gas from Algeria and Norway, and almost all our electricity is from nuclear reactors ... almost all this BS is sensationalism and clickBait, you'll see this winter ...
I really hope this is overblown, for the sake of the citizens of European nations.
Nuclear power needs to be expanded, not decommissioned.
 
It's also a reference to Trump, who told the EU it was a bad idea only to be told he was a not-see for criticizing Brussels.
Trump as well dramatically increased taxes and customs on trade with Europe, reducing material bought-sold, and he shown eu way before Russia how bad is to have agreement with single country.
Did he say increasing trade with us was bad idea as well?
 
Trump as well dramatically increased taxes and customs on trade with Europe, reducing material bought-sold, and he shown eu way before Russia how bad is to have agreement with single country.
Did he say increasing trade with us was bad idea as well?
Option 1: Make your energy supply dependent on the nation that occupied half the continent for 50 of the past 70 years, posing a constant threat.

Option 2: Buy energy from the biggest contributor to the alliance that kept the threatening nation at bay all that time. And, just maybe, meet your commitment to that alliance by spending the required 2% GDP on defense.

Eastern Europe should be making the decisions for the EU, because they still remember the Ottoman Empire and USSR. Western Europe has cultural amnesia.

Edit: Option 3: Maintain modern nuclear power plants and be energy independent. (But that's clearly a ludicrous suggestion.)
 
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You asked for it...you got it! Freeze to death in the dark you environmentalist whack jobs.
You have access to a LOT of coal, oil & gas, but because you are woke and believe all of
this nonsense about man made global warming, now you are going to suffer.
 
I think people forget that Putin is (more was) one of the slickest politician in the modern age. This whole "not dependent on natural gas/Putin thing" looks great on hindsight. You can't forever be enemies, Japan enjoyed closed relationship with the West now. France and Germany are staunch allies in EU despite their past. China and the US used to have a common enemy, now bitter rivals. Vietnam is more friendly to the US than China these days. Putin basically convinced the world that the Cold War was a relic in the past to push his agenda. His countries' vast natural resources was perfect to satisfy the need of short term gratification of a democratic societies, which his rivals are; just add some charm offensive and you have your fingers in everybody's pie.

The man used to be a master manipulator. Tricking Trump into being his lackey, easy. But he ain't the first and his charm offensive went way back. Numerous Western politicians has either be extremely friendly or at least have a good working relationship with him. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had a very good relationship with him. George Bush more or less says he trusted him. He came to power by building trust and by appearing to be the solution, quickly build political capital and then stab his predecessors in the back.

He built partnership with a lot of his rivals so that their hands are tied when he does something that might be unpopular. His Ukraine move failed because he couldn't get it done quickly, which was a huge surprise to most observers. He got his way fast enough, there won't be anyone to send weapons to, and he probably gambled that NATO is too war averse to do anything once Ukraine fell, which is a reasonable bet. Though his move was done and failed because of his ego.
 
You asked for it...you got it! Freeze to death in the dark you environmentalist whack jobs.
You have access to a LOT of coal, oil & gas, but because you are woke and believe all of
this nonsense about man made global warming, now you are going to suffer.
The environmentalist caused the war? Because they were fine before that.
Well except for the global economic crisis, which was almost a picnic compared to what happened after the war began.
"Woke" isn't the problem, in this case. Being sound asleep, and ignorant of the facts, is.
 
The EU is in a power crisis because it did TOO GOOD of a job managing it's power needs?!?

ROFL!

Some people will believe anything the government tells them.

The EU has shut down power plants, including nuclear, in the name of climate change *despite* the great promises of green power to replace said losses not actually being online yet (or even possible in some cases).

THAT bad government policy is to blame for the over-dependence on external power sources and today's crisis. (Which was already looking bad before the natural gas pipeline was destroyed.)
 
Trump as well dramatically increased taxes and customs on trade with Europe, reducing material bought-sold, and he shown eu way before Russia how bad is to have agreement with single country.
Did he say increasing trade with us was bad idea as well?
Trump offered the EU a tariff free trade deal on all goods and the EU turned him down seeing how the EU hoses the US on tariffs.
 
I think people forget that Putin is (more was) one of the slickest politician in the modern age. This whole "not dependent on natural gas/Putin thing" looks great on hindsight. You can't forever be enemies, Japan enjoyed closed relationship with the West now. France and Germany are staunch allies in EU despite their past. China and the US used to have a common enemy, now bitter rivals. Vietnam is more friendly to the US than China these days. Putin basically convinced the world that the Cold War was a relic in the past to push his agenda. His countries' vast natural resources was perfect to satisfy the need of short term gratification of a democratic societies, which his rivals are; just add some charm offensive and you have your fingers in everybody's pie.

The man used to be a master manipulator. Tricking Trump into being his lackey, easy. But he ain't the first and his charm offensive went way back. Numerous Western politicians has either be extremely friendly or at least have a good working relationship with him. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had a very good relationship with him. George Bush more or less says he trusted him. He came to power by building trust and by appearing to be the solution, quickly build political capital and then stab his predecessors in the back.

He built partnership with a lot of his rivals so that their hands are tied when he does something that might be unpopular. His Ukraine move failed because he couldn't get it done quickly, which was a huge surprise to most observers. He got his way fast enough, there won't be anyone to send weapons to, and he probably gambled that NATO is too war averse to do anything once Ukraine fell, which is a reasonable bet. Though his move was done and failed because of his ego.
Trump was Putin's lackey? It was Trump who warned the EU about being too dependant on Russian gas, it was Trump who put sanctions on Nord Stream pipelines and it was Trump who pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Scam. Germany and Brussels are to blame for this. The Germans elected a former Communist aka Merkel and she did her best to destroy Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schröder <--- this tells you all you need to know about the Germans.
 
The environmentalist caused the war? Because they were fine before that.
Well except for the global economic crisis, which was almost a picnic compared to what happened after the war began.
"Woke" isn't the problem, in this case. Being sound asleep, and ignorant of the facts, is.
Abandoning established, effective, sufficient energy conversion/delivery methods in pursuit of a green fairytale is the first cause of the energy crisis.

Making the backup (natural gas) to the magical unicorn farts (solar & wind) dependent on an unreliable antagonist is the second cause.

Both of those are woke stupidity.

NATO refusing to say "Hey, we're not going to make Ukraine a member", followed by the Russian invasion is the third cause.

When you leave your king exposed, don't be surprised when you find yourself in check. What pieces are the EU going to sacrifice trying to get out of it? Hint: the wealthy elites will be OK.
 
Abandoning established, effective, sufficient energy conversion/delivery methods in pursuit of a green fairytale is the first cause of the energy crisis.

Making the backup (natural gas) to the magical unicorn farts (solar & wind) dependent on an unreliable antagonist is the second cause.

Both of those are woke stupidity.

NATO refusing to say "Hey, we're not going to make Ukraine a member", followed by the Russian invasion is the third cause.

When you leave your king exposed, don't be surprised when you find yourself in check. What pieces are the EU going to sacrifice trying to get out of it? Hint: the wealthy elites will be OK.
You left out the part where the US had built at least one NATO troop training base outside of Lviv right after the Maidan coup in 2014. I know this for a fact seeing how a friend of mine spent a year there training Ukrainian troops.
 
Abandoning established, effective, sufficient energy conversion/delivery methods in pursuit of a green fairytale is the first cause of the energy crisis.
The only fairy tale is the "reasoning" the right uses in their pathological denial of man made effects on the environment.

I know very well of human effects on the environment. Because I learned about it and read the proof.
Proof is something people like me have that shows how we have negatively affected the environment.
Obviously, if any denier has proof otherwise, we are always happy to see real evidence. Of course, if there is one thing that is absolutely no secret, it's that the biggest enemy of the right are facts and the truth.

What pieces are the EU going to sacrifice trying to get out of it? Hint: the wealthy elites will be OK.
Without the rich, the lower to middle class will live the life of a pauper.
If they are lucky.
 
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The only fairy tale is the "reasoning" the right uses in their pathological denial of man made effects on the environment.

I know very well of human effects on the environment. Because I learned about it and read the proof.
Proof is something people like me have that shows how we have negatively affected the environment.
Obviously, if any denier has proof otherwise, we are always happy to see real evidence. Of course, if there is one thing that is absolutely no secret, it's that the biggest enemy of the right are facts and the truth.


Without the rich, the lower to middle class will live the life of a pauper.
If they are lucky.
I've worked at an open pit mine here in Alaska insulating pipe. If you're that worried about the environment you might want to do some research on cobalt mining and while your at it tell us how you feel about the millions of birds and bats that have been killed due to wind farms.
 
I've worked at an open pit mine here in Alaska insulating pipe. If you're that worried about the environment you might want to do some research on cobalt mining and while your at it tell us how you feel about the millions of birds and bats that have been killed due to wind farms.
You are wrong about those things, and you know it. I have told you many times, with proof, that you are masterfully cherry-picking and I'm not wasting my time now. So I will repeat myself with a copy\paste. Call this a rerun:

Everyone knows the mining has to stop. We also are aware of the phrase "Temporary bad for a permanent good".

"So why don't you led by example now. Toss your phones and laptops, TV's, cosmetics and fireworks. Be gone with your cordless tools. Wait. Cordless everything! PC peripherals, bluetooth....everything with a battery. Who owns a digital camera? Tablet PC? Are you a gamer? Best chuck the cordless controller. Throw away your smoke\gas detectors."

Next, once again:

And a fairly new one. I have only shown you this 3 or 4 times:

Last. Since we are such good forum buddies :D I hope you had a great vacation brother.
 
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