Cut the electricity and the mobile network. France is going through its worst energy crisis since the 1970s, according to TF1. To deal with it, a solution was considered this summer by the major players concerned by the subject: the operators, the government and Enedis, the manager of the electricity distribution network.
The Reuters news agency reports that this company is considering power cuts of up to two hours. These are the “rotating load shedding” mentioned by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne since September 1. Consequence: the mobile network would no longer work during this period.
However, for telecom operators, it is out of the question to turn it off. “Mobile networks are absolutely essential for routing emergency calls. That is to say, call the Samu social, the Samu, and obviously the gendarmerie and the police” defended Liza Bellulo, president of the French Federation of Telecoms on RTL.
Maintaining the network is potentially vital: according to Le Monde, 90% of emergency calls are made from a mobile. For example, the breakdown of emergency numbers managed by Orange on June 2, 2021 killed six people…
The gargantuan electricity consumption of certain departments makes them prime targets for cutting off the power… and therefore the mobile network. Planet has produced the slideshow below, based on data from Data.gouv.fr for the year 2020 on electricity consumption, to find out which part of the territory would be likely to be impacted.
