The family of my co-worker have a power cut and talk of power cuts across Europe.
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Spain and Portugal
Nothing here close to border with Spain on med side. Actually if there were power cuts we wouldn’t be able to reply, would we?
It seems phone and internet is working, at least partially.
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Actually it shows why you should always keep some cash handy especially if you need something urgent and card machines/ATM’s are not working.
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That could be due to battery backups at the masts. Not sure how long they can run for though. The data centres will have onsite diesel generators that can keep them operational for several days (I used to be involved in DR & BCP in a previous role).
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Depends how the network configured them to behave when grid power is lost and home many back up batteries the cell site has installed.
Three UK’s 4G cells could last a couple of days if they only took emergency and restricted access class traffic, providing no-one had nicked the very expensive backup batteries.
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I look forward the “block out the Sun’s rays to prevent global warming” experiment causing a sharp decline in solar power generation in the affected area.
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I understand that some of the phone networks are already dropping off the air, with people losing communication after a period from the cuts.
Possibly enabling Access Class Barring to save resources for emergency services personnel rather than folks watching TikTok videos.
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This guy interviewed by the BBC is doing a good job at destroying the myth about Brits on the piss in Spain… Oh wait 
Went there once, nasty horrible place full of drunks, all day fried breakfasts and nothing cultural or interesting unless you left the town and went inland.
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And crops if its sustained.
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Just spoke to our daughter who lives in Barcelona.
Power went off at 12 noon and back on at 4.45pm.
Only emergency phone lines working and literally everyrhink stopped.
She said it was very strange having to talk to people face to face ro find out what was happening but of course nobody knew but lots of conspiracy theories being banded about!
One person was in the lift in her building and fortunately when it stopped it was almost at floor level so able to unlock manually from outside and they crawled out.
A very unusual experience!
By coincidence we had our first power cut for years last weekend with the power being off from eight o’clock on Friday evening through to about one o’clock on Sunday. As wasn’t part of a huge European outage is was a break in a line about a kilometre away and affected a handful of houses. I felt smug, I was able to watch videos on my iPad linked to the 4G on my phone and I got my camping equipment out for hot drinks and light.
I wonder if we will have another one this decade.
I once lost an Abbey National passbook with £20,000 in the account. The lady on the helpline asked me three security questions which would have been easy with the book in front of me but impossible without. One of the questions was where and when had I opened the account. I told her I didn’t know the date but it was in Fore Street in St Austell and although I knew the month and year I didn’t know the date. I did know however that it was the day after a power cut had taken out the whole street for an afternoon, the day I couldn’t open the account because their computers were down and even Woolworths had shut because the tills wouldn’t work.
She told me that as I couldn’t answer the questions she could not help and hung up. Several days later I managed to speak to a nice man who not only found my account details but helped me set up an online account so my money and I were reunited. His security questions were great.
He said he would have to ask security questions.
I pointed out that I had already failed that test.
He said, answer the questions.
His first question was, had I deposited any money into the account using the book in the past 24 hours?
I reminded him that I had lost the book.
He told me to answer the question.
I said, no I have not.
He then asked me if I had withdrawn any money using the book in the past 24 hours?
No again.
The doors opened, I had passed the test.
A nice man.
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Indeed
Remember that the operators will almost certainly not have access to the answers - just a box on a computer screen into which to type whatever you give as the answer.
I think the nice man was several pay grades above the people who normally ask the questions.