Will we have the phone in January?
With the return of the cold, the risks of power cuts are back on the front of the stage.
"
I fear that our fellow citizens will discover that telecom networks depend on electricity
," said Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange before the Senate's Economic Affairs Committee.
In the event of load shedding, that is to say a targeted power outage, the observation is clear: telephone and internet communications will be cut off.
It is therefore impossible to make phone calls or even to contact emergency numbers.
"
If mobile services are off for two hours, there will be no access to the emergency number
," she insisted.
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"
There could be situations in which there is electricity in an apartment, but no mobile network, or the opposite, if the dwelling and the antenna are not in the same area
" for power cuts running.
Indeed Enedis could cut the electricity "by plates": if the antenna and the housing are not on the same plate, one could be affected and the other spared.
Read alsoOrange organizes itself to deal with power cuts
It is also impossible to think of installing batteries at the foot of the tens of thousands of operators' mobile antennas.
“It would take at least five years to do it
,” explains Christel Heydemann, before recalling the negative “
economic and ecological
” consequences that such a deployment would have.
However, "
Orange has a resilience greater than that of its competitors
", adds the boss of the group.
She also recalled that "
the sites of telecom operators are not, by the law on critical networks, considered as a priority
".
This explains why the power supply to mobile antennas, among other equipment, could be cut off this winter.
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