The Spanish off ducts use of the Musk’s Starlink

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Spanish and Portuguese mobile and Internet users went to Starlink by Elon Musk on Monday in number of records, as a widespread electric dull on the Iberian Peninsula exposed to vulnerabilities in telecommunications networks.

The use of the Starlink Satellite Communication Service increased 35 percent above the average when the telecommunications coverage fell to the two countries, according to data analyzed by the Financial Times. The use was 60 percent larger in Spain than the average on Tuesday, as mobile networks struggled to return to speed.

The data provided by the Internet Access Okla show showed Starlink’s “registration” use in the country with “thousands” of people using the service, according to Luke Kehoe de Ookla, although the company refused to provide exact figures on use.

Starlink coverage quality fell as more users went to the service but did not cut During the offadded. Although some Starlink terrestrial stations in the continental Spain could have lost their service, the connections were possible in places in other countries such as Italy.

However, satellite coverage is unlikely to provide coverage to millions of users during any similar blackout event in the future. Users required sufficient load on mobile devices to access the service.

Spanish Network Operator Electric red He said that he does not know the exact cause of the interruption, which some experts have linked to the inability of the Spanish electricity network to manage an unusually high supply of solar energy.

Traditional mobile coverage in Spain and Portugal was severely affected by electrical interruption, causing calls to the Spanish mobile network more resistant.

The consistency in the network, a metric of reliability of the service, fell up to half its normal rate on Monday afternoon, found Okla.

This arose, as many of the thousands of mobile antennas throughout Spain were affected by the loss of power, leaving only those with a safety generation.

“Too many people were trying to access few resources. That is why during the recovery phase it was difficult for connectivity to be stable,” said Claudio Fianrino, researcher at the Imdea Networks Institute in Madrid.

Telecommunications networks often have a backup generation in some sites, but there are limits to their use.

Vodafone España said backup generators had begun 70 percent of their places in Spain when the interruption began. But at 23:00, 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 major supplier, said that “he prioritized critical infrastructure for emergency services and hospitals rationalizing the use of resources” during electrical interruptions, restoring 95 percent of his mobile network in just over 24 hours and “complete” on Thursday.

Kehoe de Ookla said that Spain and Portugal are “not unique in terms of not having a significant presence of battery back safety generators on the mobile network”.

In the United Kingdom, a recent report from of Commin found that for short power shutdowns, approximately two -thirds of the United Kingdom could make emergency calls at least one hour, thanks to the generation of backup for one fifth of the master’s sites.

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

Telecommunications companies told of Combin that the costs of the backup are “prohibitive”, according to February, according to February report.

Kehoe said that Spanish and Portuguese telecommunications companies work with “very tight margins” because prices are so low. This makes resilience investment more difficult than in Nordic, for example, where average income per user is higher and where the backup generation is stronger.

Although the scale of Spain’s interruption was different from everything the country has experienced earlier, the increase in extreme weather events drives governments to focus more on the resilience of telecommunications networks.

In Norway, operators must fund a two -hour battery back in cities and four hours in rural areas. Australia has introduced public funding for operators to provide 12 hours of backup of battery in places in some remote areas.

The causes of the Spanish shutdown are still not determined, but its scale is likely to be “a clarity call for government and regulators to pay attention to resilience,” said Grace Nelson, an Assembly Research analyst, a UK -based research company.

Kieran Smith’s additional reports