Europe's decision, Germany especially, to be reliant on Russia for energy when they could have not shut down nuclear plants and built more.
Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
61–70 of 436 posts
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make the case that it's unreasonable to not want Soviet nukes in Cuba.
Apples and oranges. US is not and never was plundering Cuba, unlike Russians who plunder every single state in their sphere of influence until nothing is left. This is not about some nukes on Cuba, this is about living like a normal person and not in a corrupt, fascist despotism where you die decades prematurely and nobody cares.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#63I've been in South Africa for the last month, which has had an energy crisis since around 2007 and somehow they manage to keep mobile networks up during load shedding. There are 2:30 hour (sometimes 4:30 hour) blackouts daily and yet everything seems to keep chugging along. Mobile towers are probably have some of the highest electricity:benefit ratios out there, it would be silly to not prioritize them.
In Sweden we haven’t separated their power supply from anything else, so rolling blackouts will kill them as well. And the blackouts are probably coming sooner than a fix can be in place
It's a factor in the recent price spike - Swedish companies are selling surplus power to Europe at the prices these are prepared to pay.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Sweden we haven’t separated their power supply from anything else, so rolling blackouts will kill them as well. And the blackouts are probably coming sooner than a fix can be in place
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…
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The less reliable the grid, the more backup power is planned into infrastructure like cell towers. In Europe the grid has historically been quite reliable, so backup options are likely more limited at these sites.
Yes: this is the same as when an inch of snow shuts down a warm city and people from cold cities say "we handle worse storms several times a month". People engineer for likely conditions, and those aren't the same everywhere.
Ex: Atlanta gets roughly 2 inches of snow a year (usually one or two minor snowfalls) and it's far cheaper to simply shut down for a day when it happens than it is to have the infrastructure in place to handle staying open.
Every 10 years or so we'll get a big snow, and be down for a week (ex: 2014) and people will freak out - but on the whole, still much cheaper to have that downtime than to be exorbitantly over-prepared for situations that are rare and not disastrous.
I suspect this will be the case for the mobile outage here - on the whole, the circumstances causing the outage (lack of power) is likely not recurring, and the costs of weathering this outage with existing infra is much more favorable than being over-prepared for blackout conditions which are rare.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#66I've been in South Africa for the last month, which has had an energy crisis since around 2007 and somehow they manage to keep mobile networks up during load shedding. There are 2:30 hour (sometimes 4:30 hour) blackouts daily and yet everything seems to keep chugging along. Mobile towers are probably have some of the highest electricity:benefit ratios out there, it would be silly to not prioritize them.
We were just at stage 6 recently, and this means there are days with 1x2.5hr outages and 2x4.5hr outages, with maybe 2-3hrs between these stages to recharge batteries. In my experience the cellphone towers do not always have sufficient time to recharge their batteries.
I live on an estate with a cellphone tower owned by the largest network operator, and this is still an issue. SMS-based MFA becomes a problem when this happens.
Interestingly, I have never once had a fibre outage through years of load shedding. (I have battery backup for my fibre CPE.) I can easily get 200mbps to a local DC while people relying on 4G or 5G are completely cut off.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#67My serious question: Is this a way for the EU nations to quell public uprisings from fuel shortages by limiting network communications while not taking the blame for it?
I know I'm not supposed to do this, but is this "concern trolling"? I can't see how you could get from A->B unless you're trying to rabble rouse?
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#68This will be amazing advertising for Starlink.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apples and oranges. US is not and never was plundering Cuba, unlike Russians who plunder every single state in their sphere of influence until nothing is left. This is not about some nukes on Cuba, this is about living like a normal person and not in a corrupt, fascist despotism where you die decades prematurely and nobody cares.
Talking about corrupt despotism it is not clear to me if you are talking about Russia or Ukraine.
But one thing is to have your own problems, and entirely another thing is to be forced to have Russian problems and to have every hope for change destroyed by Russia because it's threatening their position that they built on sponsoring the corrupt people.
Consider that it was revealed that FSB has/had a massive corruption campaign in Ukraine funded with billions of US dollars per year. Let's wait with judging Ukraine until we can judge fairly.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#70"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.