Spanish blackout drives use of Musk’s Starlink

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Spanish and Portuguese mobile and internet users resorted to Elon Musk Starlink in record numbers on Monday, as a generalized electricity blackout in the exposed vulnerabilities of the Iberian Peninsula in telecommunications networks.

Use of the Starlink Satellite Communications Service in 35 cents above average when telecommunications coverage fell into the two countries, according to the data analyzed by the Financial Times. The use was 60 percent higher in Spain than the average on Tuesday, since mobile networks fought to return to speed.

The data provided by the Internet access analyst also showed the use of “registration” of Starlink in the country with “thousands” of people who use the service, according to Luke Kehoe, Malghe, the company refused to provide exact figures on use.

The quality of Starlink’s coverage fell when Moreers went to the service, but did not cut the blackout door, he added. While some terrestrial starlink stations in the Spain continent may have lost the service, the connections were possible for sites in other countries such as Italy.

However, it is unlikely that satellite coverage will extend enough to provide coverage to millions of users who kill similar blackout events in the future. Users required enough load on mobile devices to access the service.

The Spanish Network Operator Red Electrica has said that he does not know the exact cause of the interruption, which some experts have linked to the inability of the Electric Red of Spain to administer an unusually high solar energy.

Traditional mobile coverage in Spain and Portugal was severely affected by the blackout, which led the calls to make the Spanish mobile network become more resistant.

The consistency of the network, a metric or service reliability, fell halfway or its normal rate on Monday afternoon, also found.

This occurred since many of the thousands of mobile antennas throughout Spain were eliminated by the loss of energy, leaving people with operation of operation in operation.

“Too many people were trying to access very few resources. That is why the duration of the recovery phase was difficult to obtain stable connectivity,” said Claudio Fiandrino, a researcher at the IMDEA Networks Institute in Madrid.

Telecommunications networks often have support generation in some places, but there are limits for use.

Vodafone Spain said the support generators had entered 70 percent of their sites in Spain when the departure turned. But at 11 pm, many regions still had low levels of mobile traffic, with regions such as Galicia, Castilla La Mancha and Murcia with only 20 percent coverage.

Telefónica, another great supplier, said “prioritized critical infrastructures for emergency services and hospitals by rationalizing the use of resources”, Power Gate, restoring 95 percent of its mobile normality Bey Thurday.

Laoe also said that Spain and Portugal “are not unique in terms of not having a significant presence of battery support generators in the mobile site grid.”

In the United Kingdom, a recent ofcom report discovered that for short energy blackouts, approximately two thirds of the United Kingdom could make emergency calls at least, thanks to the generation of support for about a fifth or masts.

But less than five percent of these sites have backup facilities of at least 6 hours. It would cost around £ 1 billion update mobile networks to guarantee four hours or access to contact emergency services for almost all people, ofcom found.

Telecommunications companies told ofcom that the costs of providing support are “prohibitive”, according to the February report.

Spanish and Portuguese telecommunications companies are executed in “very tight margins” because prices are very low, Kehoe said. That makes investing in resilience more difficult than in the Nordics, for example, where the average income per user is higher and where the backup generation is stronger.

Although the scale of the interruption of Spain was different from everything that the country has experienced before, increasing extreme climatic events is taking governments to focus more on the resistance of telecommunications networks.

In Norway, operators must make a two -hour backup in cities and four hours in rural areas. Australia has introduced subsidies with public funds so that operators provide 12 hours of battery support to sites in some remote areas.

The causes of the Spanish blackout remain undetermined, but it is likely that its scale is “a call from Clarón so that the government and regulators pay attention to resilience,” said Grace Nelson, an analyst at Assembly Research, an investigation based in the United Kingdom.

Additional Kieran Smith reports