Mobile Mast + Power cut question for those in the know...

Our village has been suffering from a spate of power cuts recently - which also upset the (very) local mobile mast in the village. When our power does come back on - the mast never seems to recover immediately. Do they not just reboot or is it more complcated than that? Just curious.

How long does the mast take to come back online? Does it go off immediately?
There will be some kit on the mast that would take a fair few mins to re-establish connection to the core network and be ready to broadcast/receive after a startup.
Just from experience if on a leased line (Ethernet Fibre) the ONT itself can take 5 mins to boot alone.

The mast stays on a little longer than the actual power cut - at which point our signal then comes from masts further out that haven't been affected - presumably when its battery backup gives up.

When the power returns the mast doesn't recover. When reported – the automated O2 response suggests that engineers need to be onsite - of course that could just be a boilerplate answer - but sometimes hours after the power is back on we get signal back - but sometimes can take considerably longer.

It could be that the mast has issues with the electrical trips / rcd breakers and requires an engineer to go and reset it.
Normally most masts come back online themselves with 10 mins-
Could you locate the mast on Cellmapper?

Types of RCD Sockets

• Passive RCD: When power is lost due to a fault the RCD trips out and isolates the circuit it is protecting. Passive RCDs do not trip during power cuts, making them ideal for fridges and freezers and also for protecting remote/unmanned areas. They are also known as a Latching RCD.

• Active RCD: These trip out and isolate the circuit due to faults and also during power cuts. Active RCDs remain off until manually reset, making them ideal for rotating machinery such as power tools and garden tools. They are also known as a Non-Latching RCD.

Edited by thomaswarne01 (Sat 03-Feb-24 21:54:16)

This should be it:
https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=234&MNC=10&type=L...

Thank you.

In reply to a post by phil_w73:

This should be it:

This might be of interest:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/12/ofcom-...

The regulator has also begun to seek industry feedback on the issue of power backup for mobile Radio Access Networks (RAN), such as those provided by EE (BT), Three UK, Vodafone and O2 (VMO2). The aforementioned guidance doesn’t yet include measures relating to the provision of additional power backup at such sites, but that could change.

Currently, the amount of battery backup across the mobile RAN varies by mobile operator (MNO), in terms of both the proportion of cell sites that are backed up and for how long. But the impact of recent winter storms and the migration away from traditional landline phones helps to underline that consumers are placing greater importance upon the dependability of their mobile phones and network, such as for emergency calls.

Ofcom is thus now exploring what additional measures MNOs could take regarding the extent of power backup provision (such as batteries) at mobile RAN cell sites. “We have set out a framework for what may be appropriate and proportionate as part of their security duties under s105A-D of the Communications Act 2003, with a view to considering what could be included in our guidance in the future,” said the regulator. But such adding such backup would no doubt be very expensive.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 04-Feb-24 11:00:54)

Thank you… I guess I had imagined we were further on with all this than we actually are!

In reply to a post by phil_w73:

Thank you… I guess I had imagined we were further on with all this than we actually are!

Yep, pretty much. I'm in the middle of a mid-sized town about 30 mins from Heathrow, and a large power cut in 2015 for about 4 hours, downed all the masts for all the operators. One Vodafone mast tried to run (batteries I'm guessing) for about 1.5 hours, but the service was unusable due to the amount of load hitting the mast due to all the others being down.

One to watch.

Seems to be a standard coverage mast for Vodafone/O2 (Shared), It looks to be fed from a Hub site from the south and its hard to pinpoint what causes the prolonged outage but it sounds to be localised at the mast. could be power related, or tech not rebooting properly and needing intervention.

As your mentioned mast microwave fed from a parent site its hard to say, as the parent mast may of run into difficulties also. so many variables but a few stand out
Power / Trips
Crash on restart
Backhaul / Link has not come back online but the transmit equipment has and is waiting for connection to core

Our few of our local Vodafone/O2 mast's are fibre fed and only ever has issues with grid power or if tech has gone wrong at the site