Guatemala Communications shuts down 5G base stations for power outages

Could a 5G power outage be a disaster?

Telecom infrastructures are connecting our society, but power outages could be a disaster because even the smallest fluctuation in power could result in communication blackouts or network failures. Investing in a telecom battery backup system is always one of the priorities for telecommunication operators in the 5G era.

Why do telcos have power outages?

Power outages aren’t the only thing that can lead to network downtime. Human error, misconfiguration, and cyberattacks can all cause issues for a telco’s network. Likewise, networks continue to increase in complexity, necessitating more updates that expose them to bugs, exploits, and cyberattacks, contributing to outages.

What happens if a telco network goes down?

Consequently, when a telco or its customer experiences a power outage that causes the primary in-band network to go down, both parties’ engineers cannot access their respective networks to determine the problem and make repairs. However, with an Out of Band network, these engineers can securely remediate issues.

How to evaluate a 5G energy-optimised network?

To properly examine an energy-optimised network, it is very crucial to select the most suitable EE metric for 5G networks. EE is the ratio of transmitted bits for every joule of energy expended. Therefore, while measuring it, different perspectives need to be considered such as from the network or user’s point of view.