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Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

reuters.com

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Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#111

Post by barbariangrunge »

stingraycharles wrote: post #80
yrgulation wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worse than you think. Germany blocked or was against a large number of alternative pipelines and was preparing to actively block nuclear at an eu level.

Why would they do that, what’s their motivation?

Question: could Russian disinformation have played a role in germanys policy here? Perhaps they were pushing anti nuclear viewpoints for a decade leading up to this?

To be clear, I have zero evidence either way, I’m just curious how large an effect these campaigns have had on public policy across the world

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#112

Post by myself248 »

Aloha wrote: post #79

I'm a former field engineer for a US Cellular carrier. I don't understand how a two hour outage is a panic event, both Cellular CO's and Cell Sites should have at least 3-4 hours of holdover time. Thats just the standard of design. Like, what happens if I storm blows thru, knocks down the infrastructure, if you have heat related infrastructure failures, or some other just normal failure - power outages happen, for th…

Same here and likewise baffled. TFA says:

> Europe has nearly half a million telecom towers and most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas.

Which seems bonkers to me. Perhaps they deploy incredibly small batteries because they're engineered for a different outage profile than the US? Or perhaps the reporter is quoting something inappropriately -- traditional large sites with many hours, and many new small sites with no backup at all, might well average out to 30 minutes.

I think there's real work to be done on improving bring-up time when power returns, though. I worked on the EVDO rollout and rebooting a site after work would take 20-30 minutes because it's something that's only expected to happen once in a blue moon. I believe if they relaxed GPS timing tolerances a bit and optimized a few other things, this could be shortened to 5-ish minutes without a whole lot of work.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#113

Post by mc32 »

Rexxar wrote: post #107
mc32 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the advantage of blowing up a pipeline over simply shutting the valve when you control the valve AND supply?

Show everybody that you can to it on other pipelines while doing it only on a currently useless one (I answer the question by giving one possible advantage, I have no opinion on the real cause at the moment)

There is little value in crazy showing crazy can do crazy things. We know crazy can do crazy. It like Kim, jung-un --it does not have to show us it is willing to lob a nuke, we know it would lob one if if needed to for self-preservation. These are rational actors, their reasoning might be foreign to us and operate differently, but they act within their own rational frameworks.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#114

Post by dehrmann »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #103
scifibestfi wrote: post #61

"Russia's decision to halt gas supplies via Europe's key supply route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the chances of power shortages." Europe's decision, Germany especially, to be reliant on Russia for energy when they could have not shut down nuclear plants and built more.

There is a penn and teller episode where they argued that globalization was creating world peace. Basically, when everyone’s economies are so entangled, they said, nobody would want to go to war because of how expensive it would be. Their model, I think, only works for democracies. When a dictator controls a country, and their quality of life remains unchanged and revolves mostly around delusions of grandeur (like an…

> There is a penn and teller episode where they argued that globalization was creating world peace.

This is something that worries me about covid supply chain onshoring.

> Their model, I think, only works for democracies.

It's kept China in-line, but it's also made North Korea a pariah state.

The other lesson we recently got in world peace is countries with nukes can do what they want to countries without nukes. Could be the US and Iraq or Russia and Ukraine.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#115

Post by chess_buster »

throw827474737 wrote: post #109
stingraycharles wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand as someone from a neighboring country — could you elaborate a bit more about what happened with the Conservative Party undermining the green energy effort? And how close would Germany realistically have been to being completely self-sufficient by now if that didn’t happen?

Blocking wind power and grid efforts everywhere, stopping planned storage efforts, man we even shut down pump storages etc over the last decades that would be so necessary to have any chance to support and realize base load with renewables. Right now we are shedding cheap bio gas and wind power production again (and that given we build up much too little as we could have) while the power stock exchanges have fun gamb…

Oh yeah, I forgot. All of that, too.

And this is the look of the politician in question https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Peter_Al...

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#116

Post by squarefoot »

maxsilver wrote: post #6

A typical cell tower uses 4kW to 5kW, sometimes less (at least in the states). That's reasonably close to a standard home's central air conditioner, or a home's electric stove/oven/range. I'd be highly surprised if, of all possible things, this is where they want to cut to lower electricity usage.

> A typical cell tower uses 4kW to 5kW

Just to give some perspective, that figure is less than 2 times what a single Antminer S19 Pro Bitcoin mining appliance draws (found by searching "most used bitcoin mining hardware"). Mining farms contain from hundreds to thousands of these devices (search "antminer farm") kept on 24/7. Also, that model is far from being the most power hungry. And no, they're not only operating in poor countries where energy is cheap: all it takes for whoever operates them is being able to profit more than the cost of energy plus maintenance, no matter where.

Rationing power for cell towers would be pure idiocy that would give nothing in return, while there are well known places where lots of energy is wasted 24/7.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#117

Post by zinekeller »

gerikson wrote: post #64
dijit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had a problem with Swedens approach a few years ago. The Swedish power grid is a single grid and the idea is: all eggs in one basket, but pay close attention to the basket. Unfortunately when it comes to datacenter designations, two independent power feeds is required for tier 2 and above. Excluding all datacenters in Sweden. At least some portions of Canada are also excluded because they have rules that s…

How does that work in for example the US? The Texas grid is separate from the rest of the continent, no?

The "two separate flow" refers not the national/regional grids but instead to the specific substations, the idea being that if a substation was tripped (due to chance or for maintenance) you can still get electricity from the alternate route.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#118

Post by gambiting »

m348e912 wrote: post #82
ajross wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's upsetting that so many here want to take a genuine (and very scary) international crisis and use it to flog their own personal peeves. Needless to say, "German energy policy of the last two decades" and "Let's Invade Ukraine and Blackmail Europe!" are different decisions , and subject to different analysis. You can have reasonable opinions about both, but if your opposition to Russian adventurism and brinksmansh…

Honest question. How did you get to the logical conclusion that Russia is the most likely party that bombed Nordstream?

To me it's completely obvious - Poland and its 50 million citizens depend on the Norway->Poland gas pipeline for having any gas this winter at all. Blowing up Nordstream is clearly a signal from Russia that if we don't stop pushing back on Ukraine, then that pipeline is next to go. That's how I read it anyway.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#120

Post by ch4s3 »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #103
scifibestfi wrote: post #61

"Russia's decision to halt gas supplies via Europe's key supply route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the chances of power shortages." Europe's decision, Germany especially, to be reliant on Russia for energy when they could have not shut down nuclear plants and built more.

There is a penn and teller episode where they argued that globalization was creating world peace. Basically, when everyone’s economies are so entangled, they said, nobody would want to go to war because of how expensive it would be. Their model, I think, only works for democracies. When a dictator controls a country, and their quality of life remains unchanged and revolves mostly around delusions of grandeur (like an…

Even for dictators, economic costs are a real barrier. You can’t loot from a broken economy in the future or build vanity projects if there’s no money. Economic interdependence constrains authoritarians as well, just a bit less.
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