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.

We lost the mobile mast which provides us with our 4G internet during the storms last winter (we lost power for 3 days during Arwen, 2 days during Malik and multiple times in between) but realised we could get signal with another provider from a different mast which has a different power supply so we have now got a backup Wi-Fi dongle which is payg data with the other provider-which we have had to use a couple of times since the storms since our power supply has been dodgy to say the least! You could do some research into where your other masts are located and see if this is an option for you.

During the power outages of last winter we literally had no connectivity until we got the backup wifi-had to drive a couple of miles down the road to get phone signal including if we needed to make an emergency call!

Exactly

@Atmywitsend29 well hopefully you'll discover yours are morning/afternoon slots thst eont interfere with live stream gaming.🤞🏼

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@Realityloom if you read my replies to The LightsideOfTheMoon the links & explanations are there.

As most of these cuts will mean we are deprived a maximum of about 7% of our usable time, could it simply be a case for most people of reorganising those days? If power cuts are 06:30 to 09:30 and then again 18:30 to 21:30 on one day of the week then start three hours earlier or three hours later.

Those 'timetables' are terrifying if you scroll down!

The first ones are OK and you think 'oh yes, perfectly doable' but they get blacker and blacker until you get three hours of electricity a week and then none.

It's really fascinating that all of this planning has been done and it's all ready and waiting.

I went thru it with DH last night, working out a plan for each stage. And then you get to stage 18 and it's like.... Ah shit.

@CookPassBabtridge Even in developing countries, the power providers can leave certain grids on for hospitals and the like. In South Africa, friends of mine don’t often have power cuts because they live near an important government minister. 🤣

Hospitals have backup generators anyway and life support machines have massive batteries in case there are power issues due to storms etc