PARIS — For months, France’s telecoms operators hoped to be shielded from potential power cuts this winter. Now they’re preparing for the worst.
As Europe heads deeper into an unprecedented energy crisis, the French government has suggested rolling blackouts could be a last resort — and telecoms won’t get the exemptions they have asked for.
“It’s no longer about how we will be protected, but how we will minimize network cuts. If there are rolling blackouts, telecoms networks will be cut in the affected areas — that is a reality and we are working on information and contingency plans with the government,” Michel Combot, French Telecoms Federation’s managing director, told POLITICO.
“The whole country is not ready, not used to this kind of phenomenon. We don’t blame the government, but I think they don’t understand the consequences of interrupting telecoms networks,” he added.
Under French law, hospitals and defense infrastructures are among the “priority clients” if power is cut — but fixed telecommunications and mobile networks are not. The telecoms infrastructure of the four main operators — Orange, Bouygues Telecom, SFR and Free — represents 1 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption.
In a report released mid-September, the country’s electricity transmission operator RTE highlighted that France, usually an exporter of electricity, is in an especially dire situation this year. On top of Russia cutting Europe’s gas supplies, more than half of French nuclear plants are undergoing maintenance and summer droughts have made it harder to resort to hydroelectric power.
France still has a good chance of avoiding rolling blackouts. “Programmed cuts — even in a worst-case scenario, which is unlikely — can be avoided if everyone takes action together, if [energy] savings extend to all sectors of the French economy,” the president of the operator’s managing board, Xavier Piechaczyk, told reporters.
But the telecoms sector’s tone — alarming though it may be — highlights how industries are seeking to adapt to the energy crisis as much of the country is leaping into the unknown this winter.
Asked about telecoms and rolling blackouts, Junior Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot’s team said that the government’s energy savings plan is designed precisely to avoid rolling blackouts by cutting energy consumption by 10 percent. All four main French operators have presented commitments to reduce their energy consumption, but none are forthcoming on how precisely they would mitigate the impact of rolling blackouts.
‘Crisis management‘
Discussions about whether telecoms operators should have priority in case of power cuts are reportedly also taking place in other countries such as Italy. In the United Kingdom, some telecoms sites are prioritized, alongside hospitals, oil refineries and other sensitive infrastructure sites. But BT, the country’s largest telecoms company, says this is far from a blanket exemption, and only a limited number of sites have a high level of government protection.
Unlike Nordic countries, France’s more than 60,000 cellphone towers are not all equipped with batteries. In mountainous regions, for instance, backup requires diesel generators.
French telecoms operators reportedly started lobbying policymakers months ago to curb the impact of potential rolling blackouts. Their efforts failed and the telecoms sector will not be designated a “priority client” in case of power cuts. “We asked to be given priority; we were not heard,” a telecom executive said.
The telecoms industry’s hopes of benefiting from local exemptions — local authorities can ask Enedis, an EDF subsidiary in charge of 95 percent of France’s electrical distribution network, to prioritize sectors over others — were also crushed, the telecoms executive explained, because they tend to follow the national guidelines.
French operators have now started to prepare for potential rolling blackouts, working with policymakers on “crisis plans,” while complaining that Enedis will only inform them about potential power cuts the evening before it happens.
“On rolling blackouts, we are unable to anticipate the if, the where and the when,” the French Telecoms Federation’s Combot said. “We are in crisis-management mode, leaping a bit into the unknown. It’s not only about us: If there are no more networks, there are no more emergency calls, no more surveillance cameras,” he added.
Telecoms operators will look into equipping the most sensitive sites with generators and ensuring technicians are mobilized to restart the networks if they do not restart automatically, Combot explained.
Catherine Coulon, a project manager at Orange, was confident rolling blackouts wouldn’t be a disaster. She said the legacy operator’s batteries are permanently kept topped up while the network is online and are designed to keep infrastructure running for “up to three hours” wherever there are cuts.
A spokesperson for Orange, however, sounded a more cautious note, saying no plan had yet been decided, and that talks were ongoing with national and regional authorities.
Bouygues, Free and SFR did not immediately return requests for comment.
Giorgio Leali contributed to this report.
