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Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#31

Post by bluesmoon »

codetrotter wrote: post #2

> some information services were still able to stay online and available I’m in Valencia, Spain. The mobile internet connectivity here during the power outage was very unstable. Cellular phone signal strength was also very very low for the majority of the time. Even sending SMS or WhatsApp messages would not work most of the day, because of just how unusable mobile connection was for me and my girlfriend and our fami…

Thank you for your personal story about this. It helps to put things in perspective.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#32

Post by anthk »

Ah, yes, a flagged comment, because maybe some clueless idiots think the whole of Spain it's a paradisian beach in the Southern Mediterranean part and they didn't manage to research about the split work schedule affecting the whole country, even when the North and mountain/plains the temps can get below 0 in Winter with ease, so the whole siesta myth get crushed down.

No siesta, but:

- Lunch with the family. No phones, just the TV news.

- GMT+1 Timezone, so the sun's highest point it's at 13/14PM .

- Split work schedule because of the lunch

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#33

Post by pmontra »

giorgioz wrote: post #13

I was in Spain during the blackout nearby Valencia. My phone had 3G data connectivity from 12:30 to 18:30 despite the outage. Same for the fiber signal, powering the modem&router with batteries allowed me to a working fiber connection for 4 hours. Some neighbors with different mobile operators told me they did not have signal. It might be some operator had backup diesel generator that lasted 4 hours.

Not only the backup generator of that base station but the backup power of all the network hardware up to it. The base station could have outlasted some other parts that run out of diesel before it did and yet it did not have connectivity.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#34

Post by anthk »

In my case, 2G/3G connections with a power outage from 12:30 PM to 14:20 PM in Bilbao. Calls barely worked and for the internet, being a doomed nerd I've juse used Lagrange under Android with Gopher and Gemini proxies to the web (News Waffle) in order to read the newspapers because our media outlets didn even fit the sites for the low bandwith, something North Americans are greatly doing with https://text.npr.org and https://lite.cnn.io

Some people even bought FM radio receivers en masse; because they work with batteries and the stations and repeaters are already set to use emergency generators.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#35

Post by scary-size »

myself248 wrote: post #4

It's one thing to have traffic data, presumably connected from some internet point or something, idk, I just assume that everything's monitored somewhere. But how do they know users' phone battery level?

That one threw me off as well! As the other commentators mentioned: "Navigator.getBattery" in browsers is the culprit. "Luckily" it's not supported in Safari and Firefox.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#36

Post by tecleandor »

alexpotato wrote: post #3

> Germans take a 1 hour lunch from 12-1pm. Spaniards have a later lunch, starting around 1pm, and going on until 4 or 5pm. This could possibly be due to the tradition of afternoon siesta. NPR had a podcast episode (Planet Money maybe?) about how the EU was supposed to make it easier for firms to hire cross border and employees to move around. The idea was to be more like the United States. Apparently, this didn't qui…

In offices it would usually be from ~14h to 15h or 15:30h. Open to the public, street-level, small businesses (let's say, a butcher, a small hardware store, a bakery...) usually close from 14h to 16h or 16:30h. They open till later than other countries, though, often till 20h or so. That can vary per region and the size of the city, of course.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#37

Post by ru552 »

amelius wrote: post #21
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #19

Related: Starlink was still online and its usage surged during the outage: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1919360047005528193

Would it be possible to sign up for Starlink __during__ an outage like this?

Sure, but you can't use it until the hardware shows up.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#38

Post by imhoguy »

briandear wrote: post #15
codetrotter wrote: post #2

> some information services were still able to stay online and available I’m in Valencia, Spain. The mobile internet connectivity here during the power outage was very unstable. Cellular phone signal strength was also very very low for the majority of the time. Even sending SMS or WhatsApp messages would not work most of the day, because of just how unusable mobile connection was for me and my girlfriend and our fami…

I'm in Barcelona (Sabadell specifically,) and the cellular networks were down. Luckily I have a generator and Starlink.

Isn't Starlink using country-local ground stations for the Internet connectivity? Likely they had power-backup but could it switch to foreign country stations?

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#39

Post by ntonozzi »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #11
alexpotato wrote: post #3

> Germans take a 1 hour lunch from 12-1pm. Spaniards have a later lunch, starting around 1pm, and going on until 4 or 5pm. This could possibly be due to the tradition of afternoon siesta. NPR had a podcast episode (Planet Money maybe?) about how the EU was supposed to make it easier for firms to hire cross border and employees to move around. The idea was to be more like the United States. Apparently, this didn't qui…

Solar noon in Madrid is at 2:13PM due to the absurd time zone that Spain's in. Having lunch at 1PM is early, not late.

Well this explains a lot of things that I always attributed to Spanish culture.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#40

Post by anthk »

tecleandor wrote: post #36
alexpotato wrote: post #3

> Germans take a 1 hour lunch from 12-1pm. Spaniards have a later lunch, starting around 1pm, and going on until 4 or 5pm. This could possibly be due to the tradition of afternoon siesta. NPR had a podcast episode (Planet Money maybe?) about how the EU was supposed to make it easier for firms to hire cross border and employees to move around. The idea was to be more like the United States. Apparently, this didn't qui…

In offices it would usually be from ~14h to 15h or 15:30h. Open to the public, street-level, small businesses (let's say, a butcher, a small hardware store, a bakery...) usually close from 14h to 16h or 16:30h. They open till later than other countries, though, often till 20h or so. That can vary per region and the size of the city, of course.

But not for siesta, for lunch. And, by lunch, for HNers, I mean a mid sized meal, not just a sandwitch.

The problem is Spain is that we have the breakfast and lunch kinda the opposite as the Brits.

Brits eat a big breakfast and a small lunch. We do the opposite. Some coffee and maybe a small pastry, and we are done for breakfast. For luch, we have a first and second dish and a dessert.

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