Will mobile phones have internet access during any planned blackouts?

[zippalippa]

For the purposes of this post let's just imagine staggered blackouts go ahead this winter. Please don't reply with 'well it won't happen' because I'm just doing a planning exercise in my head and I find it interesting to think things through!

For people working from home, usually a laptop battery can last a few hours and you can use your mobile phone as a hotspot for the internet so everything carries on as normal. But if the planned blackouts go ahead do the mobile masts cut out as well? Or do they have backup batteries so 3g/4g would still work?

I have tried googling but can't find anything pertaining to pre planned blackouts, only storms etc which often damage the masts anyway.

For our area we have 6 hours of cuts falling during one work day so it really would be a bit of a pain for home workers. Travelling to the nearest office wouldn't be much help as everyone will have the same idea and a lot of businesses have downsized so there aren't enough hot desks to serve everyone.

I think it will depend on the size of the area with blackouts, and what is exempted. You may be able to go even a few minutes walk to someone that still has power.

The other thing to consider is when they might take place. So changing work hours on a day with potential blackouts might be an option to consider.

Not unless the local mobile phone mast have independent electrical supply.

Most masts have back up supplies in case of such situations. So yes, as long as you've have an active data plan, you should have access to the internet.

How do you find out when and where the blackouts are happening?

We have no mobile signal and BT replaced our landline with a digital voice phone which relies on wifi.
I have a UPS which is basically a big battery, we get a lot of power cuts and last year it powered our wifi for 6 hours. Cost about £100.

A lot of them do, especially the ones that 999 calls are routed through.

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon

Ask & ye shall be provided

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/995049/esec-guidance.pdf

I'll be back to give you part A & explain in a minute!

If I remember correctly, in the 1970s the times were published and our office had lights wired up to car batteries. I was a punch card operator and in those days it was manual not computerised so we could work, albeit the office was freezing. I remember going to the hairdressers and they only had cold water to wash my hair.😃

How do you know what area you are?

I thought the black outs posdibly predicted were mainly targeted 4pm-7pm by area, rather than rolling all day.

People still work at those hours

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon

www.powercut105.com/

go there first, scroll down to the 'find your provider' bit, put in your post code & you'll get a letter. That's the area you're in.
then go to the first link I put in the previous post & scroll down to where you'll find a table. If you go down the first column with letters in in, find the first letter and to the left there's the date & time if your black out.

there should be about 3 in that column.

thsts column 1. There are 18 columns each with increasing outages. Hopefully we won't get past column 1, if we have any at all.

@KimWexlersPonyTail my mum was a punch card operator in those days too! I must ask her what they did!

That's interesting @Mosik , I'll have to look into buying one of those if it goes ahead

During Storm Desmond we had no electricity for 4 days and there was no mobile signal.

I know, but it's not the 6 hrs a day that is mentioned in the OP.
ie I think there are lower possible black outs than that emergency plan.

It makes me laugh to think about wiring stuff up to car batteries @KimWexlersPonyTail . Can you imagine people trying to figure out how to safely do that nowadays without a YouTube video on hand if the mobile signal goes down? We'd all be lost, people don't have books to fall back on for practical stuff as much nowadays.

I remember clearing out my grandfather-in-laws flat and finding loads of DIY and car manuals, it's not something we see in most modern homes.

To clarify regarding the 6 hours in one day thing - our area has two separate 3 hour slots but they both fall mostly during working hours.

With all of my husband's colleagues working hundreds of miles away I think theres going to be a bit of irritation when he can't join Teams calls every week when they're all on a different switch off timetable to him.

@StillNotWarm

Are you referring to my post ? If you are, maybe I shouldn't have used the term area?

various post codes are grouped together (I'm assuming they're all nearby each other (they were in the ones I checked)). They are allocated a letter, for convenience on the chart.

Yes I remember that @OrganTransplant123 , it sounded horrible. I read that even emergency 999 calls weren't possible for some people. 😱

These are great resources @JustOrderADoor , thank you for sharing!

We live in a village that regularly has small power outages (usually lasting not more than a few minutes) depending on why the power is out depends whether we have phone signal or not.
However, our phone signal is shit anyway and randomly drops out.

Tbh I'm dreading it if it happens, not the blackouts themselves because I think we could cope. But because if they go ahead my self-employed DH can't work. And we would really struggle if he's not earning money!

After storm Arwen we had no power to our village for about 30 hours. In theory we still had mobile phone access but we lost the 4G and couldn't get on the internet. Possibly the network was overloaded.

The full plans are available online - interestingly they are dated revised 2019, these are normal government contingency plans (The Sun claimed source unknown but it took me 10 seconds to kind the source!)

Critical infrastructure including communications are protected in the initial phases and only would be affected if wider measures are needed.

It's highly unlikely that blackouts will be widespread unless there's additional factors eg no wind.

@StillNotWarm sorry I need more coffee!!

I read your list as 'hiw for you NOT know what area you are'

you go to the link in my second post, scroll down & enter your post code

www.powercut105. Com

People of a nervous disposition really shouldn't look at page 35. 😱