The operators, who fear extinction of their mobile networks, ask to appear in the list of clients exempt from load shedding.
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How to ensure that in the event of a voluntary electric cut (load shedding) The telecom networks continue to operate? The manager of the electricity network (RTE) may think that a “general mobilization” will escape the load shedding this winter, the question causes cold sweats among operators and to ministerial offices. Because, without electricity, more relay antennas and, therefore, more mobile telephony.
Now, today, almost 90 % of emergency calls have made from a mobile. No one wants to relive the drama of the breakdown, on June 2, 2021, emergency numbers managed by Orange: six people died for lack of having been able to join the emergency services. Identified for weeks, the subject was mentioned, on September 13, during a first meeting between Jean-Noël Barrot, the new Minister Delegate in charge of Digital Transition and Telecommunications, and operators. A new meeting is scheduled for early October to find the solution and reassure everyone.
“We have no technical guarantee from Enedis”
For months, telecoms have been asking to appear in the list of “priority clients” exempt from load shedding as fixed by the decree of July 5, 1990, in the same way as hospitals or industrial installations essential to national defense . Operators would also like to be technically fixed. “To date, we have no technical guarantee from Enedis which allows us to ensure that a relay antenna would not be cut during a load shedding,” explains Liza Bellulo, secretary general of Bouygues Telecom.
enedis, the EDF subsidiary responsible for the management of the electricity distribution network, says it is “able to technically isolate medium voltage sections supplying these priority customers in the event of exceptional cuts” and recalls that “Telecom operators’ installations can be defined by prefectures as being excluded” load shedding.
But Enedis does not want to carry the responsibility of a possible cut. “An extract from the ORSEC G5 guide on the recovery and emergency supply of electricity networks, electronic communications, water, gas, hydrocarbons recalls that the user whose activity cannot bear a cut or an interruption of a network must be equipped with clean palliative means “, underlines the network manager.
Clearly, telecom operators must install genenales at the foot of the generators or batteries capable of taking over from the electrical network. “Some major sites already have generators or microbatteries, but it is unthinkable for the 60,000 mobile phone turns in France”, retorts SFR, which says it is assiduously thinking about the subject.
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