Bad weather can affect Vodafone's mobile network, so the company has technology and procedures in place to lessen the impact of such disruptive events and ensure any repairs are done as quickly as possible, despite the many challenges facing engineers in the field.
Everyone in the UK is familiar with the disruption and inconvenience that wet and stormy weather can bring. But few will know about how Vodafone plans for and deals with such events, given their potential impact on its mobile network. The company’s ever-evolving measures will become even more important if climate change isn’t brought under control, leading to storms and other extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, becoming much more frequent.
Preparation, preparation, preparation
Masts are the one part of Vodafone’s mobile network most likely to be affected by bad weather as they sit above ground, with the majority standing at a height of up to 25m. While no mast can be made completely disruption-proof, they can be designed to be more resilient.
To provide emergency power in the event of a power cut, backup batteries can be installed in street cabinets, alongside a connector port for a generator, as long as there is space to do so around the mast.
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Vodafone has 18,000 masts across the UK, known collectively as the Radio Access Network (RAN). The traffic from each mast is routed to other parts of the country, and the wider world, by dedicated computers called signalling controllers. Located in secure data centres, any given part of the country will have a signalling controller for 4G and 5G, with another for 2G. That way, if the data centre itself suffers a power cut and needs to conserve back-up power, it can still maintain at least one mobile service in its zone.
Microwave links are an instance where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In remote areas of the countryside, a few masts use a short-range microwave link, rather than fibre optic or copper cabling, to connect to another mast and then on to the rest of Vodafone’s network.
For a mast’s microwave link to work though, it needs to be within the direct line of sight of another mast. Maintenance engineers can check for potential obstacles blocking that line of sight, such as leaves and branches from nearby trees, and prune them before they can cause a problem.
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The Network Operations Centre (NOC), a restricted-access facility, coordinates teams of field engineers dotted around the country. If an advance weather warning is in place, it can temporarily increase the number of field engineers on duty, ready to respond to any emergencies.
Response and repairs
Perhaps unsurprisingly, temperature sensors are used at mast sites to detect unusually hot conditions. If a mast’s temperature sensor is triggered, an alert is sent to the NOC which will then send field engineers to investigate and resolve the issue.
Temperature sensors are more likely to be triggered at sites that get hot enough to require active mechanical cooling, which is basically air conditioning, rather than simply drawing in the surrounding, cooler air. The most common fault in such active cooling systems are air filters, which prevent minute particles of dirt from getting into and clogging the system. Repairing them can be as straightforward as cleaning or replacing such filters, especially in areas with high levels of air pollution.
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Mast sites that repeatedly trigger their temperature sensors will be classified as high risk by the NOC, which will then carry out a detailed investigation to find out how to reduce or eliminate the risk of overheating. Solutions can include more frequent maintenance and upgrades to the cooling system.
Even when extreme, disruptive weather has passed, few site repairs are ever quick or easy. Even if field engineers can get past blocked roads and flooded fields, for example, all sorts of other challenges can await them. Severed fibre optic cables or damaged antennas need network and radio engineers to assess them. Masts and poles need to be assessed by structural engineers. Needless to say, the more extensive the damage, the more likely it is that it will take longer to repair – especially if access is made more difficult by blocked roads and flooded fields.
If mains power is out for an extended period of time, network planners back in the NOC may have to make difficult choices about how best to use the limited power-generating capacity of backup batteries and generators, while the field engineers liaise with authorities such as the National Grid.
To stay up-to-date with potential disruptions to the Vodafone mobile service near where you work and live, sign up for mobile network alerts from the Network Status Checker.
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