Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal
blog.akamai-mpulse.com
blog.akamai-mpulse.com
I’m in Valencia, Spain.
The mobile internet connectivity here during the power outage was very unstable.
Cellular phone signal strength was also very very low for the majority of the time.
Even sending SMS or WhatsApp messages would not work most of the day, because of just how unusable mobile connection was for me and my girlfriend and our families here.
And I only managed to load news pages, national or foreign, a few times during the hours of outage, to try and get some information on what cause, how widespread, and how long it would probably take to restore power.
On the plus side I did get to try my little solar panel for the first time to try and charge one of my power banks using solar power. And it did seem to get some juice out of it.
The biggest problems of all from my pov was:
- We live on the 8th floor with a 1 year-old baby. Going 8 floors of stairs with the stroller was not fun.
- All my money is electronic, except from one 50 euro bill I had in my wallet. How was I going to pay for water and food if this outage would go on.
- What’s going on? How bad is it? How long is it going to last? Very unstable mobile internet as mentioned.
In the end we ended up staying outside going for a walk and meeting up with my mother a bit and then me and my girlfriend and our baby going to the beach and sitting there until late. Finally when we came home lights were starting to come back on. And the elevator was working again too!
The next day the first thing I did was walk to the nearest ATM and withdraw several hundred euros, and I bought a bunch of water. We don’t have a car, so I used one of my big bags with wheels to be able to bring more water home than usual.
I received news of power coming back in the first few towns through it, before FM radio.
I needed to get closer to the river to get reliable contacts, but I've now ordered a nice antenna and a solar kit to mount a repeater in a mast on my roof so I can cover the center of my town more reliably.
We live off grid - independent power supply, starlink, no cell reception in our valley, EV charged off the panels. Just another day.
Worryingly, after about four hours of power cut the local town had already run out of water (they pump up to a relatively small (100m3) holding tank), so we donated our stash in the car to the kindergarten for the kids staying later.
No run on the banks here though - we are super rural and pretty much everyone keeps wads of cash (land deals etc. are almost always done with the official bit and the under the table bit) and has a full pantry at home.
Yes, one positive aspect of these types of events is that the hazing against the cash-first minority worldwide has ebbed slightly. Sweden seems to be backtracking from their cashless push due to the threat of Russian cyberattacks as well.
In related news, high-speed trains appear to have been sabotaged in Spain today, causing transportation chaos again. This happened while they have not been able to conclusively determine the cause of the blackout.
The plot thickens...or gets sidetracked, depending on what the truth turns out to be.
That's...a pretty strong opinion.
Otherwise cash will still have it's issue during a blackout. For instance I'm not sure most shops would operate their POS during a blackout or without any connectivity, at least if there is any hope of resuming normal operations within days, it would screw the ledgers. ATMs of course are dead. Vending machines are also probably not ready for that (Japan has emergency ready ones, I can't imagine other countries doing that)
We're already in a world where cash is second class citizen, and it won't just get back to the "good old days" because of a temporary outage.
And it will also be a different story altogether if power/internet never comes back. Having cash stashed somewhere might not help you that much.
I'll go out on a limb and say it's only a strong opinion for anyone who isn't familiar with trying to use cash exclusively for all physical transcations under 1000 dollars in their day-to-day lives.
In London, they have tube stations with a single coffee stand on the platform that's card-only. It's a fucking outrage in my humble opinion. and just another form of debanking, pure and simple.
The official advice was changed from "keep some cash for emergencies" to "keep some cash in small banknotes for emergencies" to "pay in cash at least sometimes, to keep the systems that deal with it functioning".
If you're a person who uses cash a lot, the comments you hear do start to feel a bit like hazing. You very often hear jokes like "who uses cash anymore?" both directed at you and not, like you're a crazy person for preferring not to support Visa's advertising empire with a ~1-3% tithe on every purchase.
The EU caps the credit card rate at 0.2-0.3%, so the moral argument for not using card payments is a lot weaker, and most countries have also widely used non credit card electronic payment.
SEA countries are mostly in the same boat, with higher credit card fees but more competition.
Most of the bars keep serving to cash customers, and use paper to make notes for future bookkeeping. Some even start using paper tabs.
Big companies switch to backup generators (Walmart) or immediately cease business (also Walmart, because the card communication failed).
Some smaller ones had no lights to continue to be safe inside, so chased everyone out.
Other ones had enough windows and kept selling on a cash basis, making notes by hand. Some of these could open the cash drawer others couldn't, but made do with what they could.
Paper money isn’t guaranteed to be always accepted. It only takes most governments a one day to say something like “because of <big crisis> we’re no longer accepting <currency> as they’re subject to <something bad>”. Paper money becomes fireplace material in an instant. (Or dystopian scenario - dictator decides that currency transactions can be done only by citizens, all other transactions are void).
What is really weird is this dualism in trust. On one side there’s distrust to government controlled organizations about online money, and on the other there’s trust that government (own or foreign) won’t regulate it into oblivion for some silly reason.
If we get to apocalypse level crisis one is much better off on stocking cigarettes, coffee and chocolate anyway…
But what caused the frequency drop? Large-scale grids are designed and operated in such a manner that any single fault, even one which causes a frequency drop (like a generator or a power line getting disconnected), will not cause a blackout. Which means: if there isn't enough inertia to compensate the frequency drop caused by a single fault anywhere in the grid, the system operator will either order photovoltaics and wind turbines to reduce their generation to a safer level, or order traditional rotating generators to operate as synchronous condensers (which adds inertia without adding generation).
Which means that either there was a double fault (two faults close enough in time that there wasn't enough time to reconfigure the system to a safer state before the second fault), or that the modeling of how the photovoltaics and wind turbines would react to a single fault was incorrect (for instance, expecting them to stay connected for longer on that level of frequency drop). My personal guess is that we're going to see a repeat of what happened here in Brazil in 2023, as I explained in another comment on an earlier thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43821801), where a single fault was enough to destabilize the system because the inverters in wind and solar power plants disconnected earlier than expected.
Wouldn't a supply surplus cause a frequency increase, not a frequency drop?
I think this is a problem with https. I remember intermittent connectivity as way better before Google forced the issue.
And yes I like https. But it comes with drawbacks. E.g. no isp caching.
Also I am very happy that it is not a thing and that ISPs cannot do that. When I go to a website I want to get the website from the webserver exactly as the server delivers it and not some other page that my ISP thinks is how the website should look.
Besides with global CDNs we have something very similar but better anyway. I don't get the site from the other side of the world but from the closest CDN server that does caching. The important difference is that the CDN server is authorized by the website to cache the page and the webmaster has control over what it does.
Transparent squid proxies were common back when most sites were on http. They let ISPs reduce the use of their limited upstream bandwidth, while also making sites load faster. The complexity and resource requirements were modest: install squid on a server, and configure the router to redirect (masquerade) all outgoing TCP port 80 connections to the port configured for squid on that server.
With bandwidth usage the diversity of the data retrived over the internet has also gone up. You can't just cache the few most popular websites and save most bandwidth. But bandwidth capacity has scaled a lot so you probably also do not need to.
You could have some hash check to prevent hijacking. The old method would be naive today.
There would be some privacy concerns I guess. But it could be opt-in on the site owners part. I think caching some videos and pictures would save a lot of power.
> Besides with global CDNs we have something very similar but better anyway.
Sure but they are some switches away.
But how do you know that the cached site is up to date? How does the ISP know that? What about dynamic content? What about consistency between different requests that are part of the same page load?
> Sure but they are some switches away.
My point is that this does not matter much. Usually, at least in non sparsely populated parts of the world with modern infrastructure, these switches are close and there is lots of bandwidth capacity.
I just don't think it makes sense for ISPs to save bandwidth on these links by building their own local data centers when they peer with a CDN data center anyway.
It would be interesting to know how much bandwidth would be saved by caching X gb of the most downloaded films, pictures and textfiles at a neighbourhood level.
In the 90s early 00s I think the share was way bigger than it would be now.
That is a very good idea for everyone. Putting together an emergency supplies kit is what various European governments, and now also the European Commission, are beginning to officially recommend:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/26/brussels-ask-e...
> What’s going on? How bad is it? How long is it going to last?
I think some governments suggest that people buy a battery-powered or hand crank radio to address exactly this issue.
Silly question but do you have AM or FM radio? When the lights went out in the northeast blackout of 2003 we turned to our cars to put on AM radio. Even after Hurricane Sandy my mother was without power for 3 weeks and she was running a battery powered radio.
I shudder to think of a future where moving information requires high performance digital electronics vs. a crystal radio set.
I don’t have one currently. But I did hear later that others were using radio to get news.
Thank you for bringing it up again. I’m gonna buy a small battery powered radio :)
Did you try with HN? I remember a long time ago I was in a hotel with bad connectivity, and one of the few sites that loaded was HN (no images, almost no JS, ...). I was able to read the comments, but it was difficult to read most of the articles.
https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/30874.pdf
EU has started this a bit, we are waking up. EVROPA.
https://www.dw.com/en/european-union-response-disasters-war-...
As for mobile connectivity, the main issue was the congestion. The cell network didn't fail, usually, but in most places either your phone wasn't able to connect or had no internet. Too many people trying at the same time, I guess. On the University on the other hand it worked perfectly. Maybe because it's a usual crowded place and there are more resources, but I think it was also because a lot of students (even teachers) went home, so those who stayed were mostly alone with a good internet...but less people to talk to.
It's "funny" how someone that is supposed to be so smart, can be so ignorant at the same time
Of course not all Germans go for lunch at 12-1 but unless you are in retail or your team has decided 1-2 is better, or 30min is enough.. I think it's just a very good guess that it's 12-1 for most the people. If it was a real 50:50 split between 12-1 or 1-2 then it could look like a 2h break. Unsure, I can't read their data properly.
But how do they know users' phone battery level?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/g...
Some people even bought FM radio receivers en masse; because they work with batteries and the stations and repeaters are already set to use emergency generators.
And 5G internet was completely unusable during the outage. All 3 major networks immediately switched to "Emergency calls only" status and allowed zero data. So doing analysis on it isn't very useful because most people had no access and only small packets made it through (favouring more simple services). It worked maybe 10 minutes every couple of hours and very limited.
I have an Iridium backup for emergency calls too. But no internet. And was thinking of getting Starlink but I don't want it anymore since musk going nazi and also the Spanish Government seems to have dropped a 9€ per month surcharge on it.
The first few hours were scary, due to complete lack of information. I am not sure how people had internet access, seemed like all networks were down here. I dont follow any news (apart from HN) but from what people are saying locally, the cause is still unknown, which I guess means it can happen again at any time.
Any recommendations from preppers on a suitable portable radio? It would be nice next time to be able to distinguish rare draughty power line issues from possible start of WWIII.
Look at reviews, I guess, or try and find an old grundig. I'm sure other people have other brands/models.
If I can remember the last decent one I was looking at I'll comment again, but hopefully this will set you on the right track.
Other brands mentioned: Eton, C. Crane. no models mentioned though. Hope this finds you well.
I have a PL 330 as my 'is there anybody out there' armaggedon world radio receiver. I also sometimes use it just for kicks to hear radio from somewhere unreasonably far away from me.
You can find a lot of pros and cons across the different models in their offering with plenty of online discussion as well.
That’s crazy that their usage is that low. Not even one visitor?
No siesta, but:
- Lunch with the family. No phones, just the TV news.
- GMT+1 Timezone, so the sun's highest point it's at 13/14PM .
- Split work schedule because of the lunch
This is not only untrue, but I would argue it also borders on being defamatory, consciously or not. Lunch breaks are typically one to two hours long in Spain, not three to four hours long--that's ridiculous. What the author is describing there would better fit what we tend to do during weekends, where "sobremesa" (coffee and drinks after we're done with the main dishes) can admittedly get a bit out of hand, but absolutely not on working days.
Wow.
Especially during the hotter months, the streets are practically empty.
There's a misconception that Spanish people are 'lazy' for their late lunches, but they're eating lunch at roughly the same local solar time.
NPR had a podcast episode (Planet Money maybe?) about how the EU was supposed to make it easier for firms to hire cross border and employees to move around. The idea was to be more like the United States.
Apparently, this didn't quite work out due to both language and cultural differences
Then, one of the guests says:
"Yes, there were some challenges. In fact, we ended up getting books with titles like: 'How to manage Spaniards if you are a German'"
I have no idea if this is true, just sounded funny to me.
Don’t know if this is true.
If this is completely true in all cases seems questionable to me, but we did complete a project faster than the Oslo office could plan and document an identical project in Norway, resulting in an audit from the head office.
"The Germans like the Italians b/c they are fun but don't respect them b/c they are disorganized.
The Italians respect the Germans b/c they are organized but don't like them b/c they are not fun"
I'm not trying to play dumb, but sun rises at 6 in the summer in Germany - most people take their lunch break at 12. Sun rises at, I dunno, 8? in the winter - lunch break at 12. Nothing changes and people are usually awake for a while already.
I couldn't tell you when the majority of office workers starts. I would say 9, especially as it's also averaging out 8 and 10 - but I am not sure. Do people in offices (who are not in media agencies) more typically start at 10 or 11?
Today's times here (Stockholm region) are: sunrise at 04.36, sundown at 20.54. The days are still getting longer of course, summer solstice is June 21st.
So wait when do they get work done? Do they just work later into the night?
And we are like reverse Brits.
Brits: big breakfast, small lunch.
Spain: small breakfast (coffee and a small pastry), and big lunch.
So, we aren't having siesta. We have a big gap at work to be able to feed ourselves on time.
Though I guess this might not qualify as "Spain" depending on who you ask - if I ask my neighbours if they are living in Spain they certainly will say NO :P Hot topic alert :)
The problem is Spain is that we have the breakfast and lunch kinda the opposite as the Brits.
Brits eat a big breakfast and a small lunch. We do the opposite. Some coffee and maybe a small pastry, and we are done for breakfast. For luch, we have a first and second dish and a dessert.
> SpaceX Corp. has launched six Starlink satellites that can provide internet access for smartphone users without requiring them to purchase additional hardware such as antennas.
https://siliconangle.com/2024/01/03/spacex-launches-first-si...
The Starlink mini model is also easily powerable by battery without 220V converter.
They don't move or anything during use, and they beamform which drastically reduces the power needed. At least this is my understanding.