Storm Éowyn: Mobile Network resilience

clohamon

Ookla - Impact Analysis: Storm Éowyn Tests the Resilience of Telecoms Infrastructure in the UK and Ireland

Storm Éowyn triggered a rapid, severe and sustained decline in mobile performance across all operators in Ireland and parts of the UK, particularly Northern Ireland and Scotland, on a scale not seen before. 

On the day the storm made landfall (24th January), median mobile download speeds in Ireland (10.04 Mbps) were 78% lower than the preceding 7-day average of 47.43 Mbps, while median latency was 23% higher at 47.6 ms.

The impacts have been significant across operators. In Ireland, Eir reported that fixed broadband faults were affecting 160,000 premises, with more than 900 mobile sites knocked offline, while Vodafone said more than 10% of its mobile site footprint was affected

The extensive damage to the electricity grid has had severe knock-on effects on both fixed and mobile network infrastructure, with well over a thousand mobile sites taken offline due to disruptions to mains power and downed trees causing damage to overhead fibre cabling along roads.

It is notable that the limited penetration of battery backup solutions in Ireland’s mobile site grid—typically providing only four to eight hours of power where available—stands in sharp contrast to regions like the Nordics and Australia, which have implemented comprehensive policy measures to harden telecoms infrastructure, as highlighted in a recent Ookla article. This shortfall has resulted in a disproportionate reliance on stationary and mobile generators in the Irish context.

While mobile generators have high operating costs, which limit their feasibility for prolonged or widespread deployment across the mobile site grid in Ireland, they offer operators valuable deployment flexibility. Mobile operators can proactively position generators at key sites based on forecasted storm tracks and leverage distributed fuel dumps across the country to enable rapid refueling during post-storm operations.

KildareP

I'm surprised it wasn't more stark to be honest.

Even where the mobile networks in our area remained on-air, thankfully, there's a fairly widespread fault on the OpenEir network throughout Kildare so no fixed broadband since Friday. As a result mobile download speeds on 3G/4G/5G across all three mobile providers are absolutely crawling during waking hours as everyone tries to use mobile data.

Calls are hit and miss and often take 2-3 attempts to connect.

FishOnABike

..

GerardKeating

For us, all three mobile networks went down for two days. I assume they all share infrastructre/masts etc.

They need more resiliencein the network. Maybe a Wind turbine on the mast or "something" to allow them to stay online when the next big storm hits.

FishOnABike

Where I was during Ophelia the mobile phone network stayed up for about half a day after power went. I think that's reasonable.

I had to travel about 10km towards the nearest large town to get a network signal. This lasted about two / three days until power was restored and mobile phone sites came back online.

Considering some areas don't expect to have power restored until 5th Feb. or later, how much more resilience is reasonable to design in and at what cost for circumstances that will most likely not reoccur within the lifetime of the equipment?

MrMusician18

The lack of resilience in both Comms and water infrastructure is an issue that needs to be addressed. In Comms, our local site went offline between 4-6 hours after loss of power. That's simply not good enough.

Operators should be putting their sites into low power mode and providing 2g service after an hour or two of outage. They also should have a plan for extended network failure and an emergency plan for same. It's clear that the scale of power outage completely overwhelmed any disaster plan they had.

Given the forecast, they probably should have went straight to low power mode for this event as quick restoration at any site was unlikely

GerardKeating

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123110794#Comment_123110794

No, they should have eneough backup power to last the outage. Low power 2G service is not worth it.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123112113#Comment_123112113

I think it's unreasonable to require mobile operators to have backup power at each site that can run indefinitely.

2g service is perfectly adequate for an extended outage to provide emergency cover. The distribution of information can be supplemented by means other than internet

GerardKeating

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123112138#Comment_123112138

Maybe not every site, but the remote ones, like this one in the uk.

clohamon

Continuing problems reports the Independent as of yesterday.

The country’s two largest mobile operators, Vodafone and Three, said today that while progress has been made, tens of thousands of customers are likely affected on their cellular or mobile broadband coverage.

Regulator, ComReg, is silent. Resilience probably follows the same logic as coverage. If MNOs spend money hardening their infrastructure it means there's less money to pay for spectrum fees.