Why the government couldn't send a blackout alert to all mobile phones even if it wanted to

BarcelonaStarting at 12:31 on Monday, as soon as the massive power outage hit the Iberian Peninsula, the Spanish telecommunications operators with their own networks (MásOrange, Telefónica, Vodafone, and Digi) held their crisis teams. At each meeting, they assessed how the power outage would affect their respective services, and specific measures were taken to maximize their continuity. In the case of mobile phones, one company deactivated its 3G service, while another shut down its 5G service.

The goal of all operators was to maximize the autonomy of their backup power systems (antennas) at their sites: batteries, which last for hours, or generators, which last for days until refueling is necessary. I emphasize this. of those who have any because the percentage of total mobile phone locations is very low.

Be that as it may, even these were falling: if before the blackout 95% of the State's mobile phones had a stable connection, just after the power cut it was only 50% - the others depended on switched-off antennas - and at 3 pm it was only 40%, the lowest of the day. It wasn't until dawn that active coverage exceeded 55%.

I was thinking about this this Wednesday when I heard the statements of the Minister of the Interior in Catalonia RadioNúria Parlon has stated that no ES-Alert warning messages had been sent to citizens' cell phones "because there was no risk situation." This is open to debate, but in any case, it doesn't fully reflect reality: even if the Catalan government had wanted to send an alert, it probably wouldn't have been able to.

If an antenna, regardless of the company, cannot offer voice or data service because it lacks power, it also cannot send Cell Broadcast messages, the technology on which ES-Alert is based. Even considering that in the densest areas there is overlapping coverage between antennas and that some of them remain active, the network's capacity to disseminate alerts uniformly diminished by the minute. Therefore, after a certain point, only a few citizens would have received the alert, and this would have caused even more confusion.

Communications between emergency services (the RESCAT network) were maintained because the Generalitat's contract with the operator Cellnex establishes a minimum autonomy of three days, but for some reason, they refuse to acknowledge that even the citizen alert systems are more fragile than they should be.