Britain could see its internet speeds turned down, blacked out during peak demand, or subjected to premium pricing as telecom companies plan to manage surging electricity prices in one of the most expensive country for energy in the world.
All of Britain’s mobile telecoms companies have warned the government that without support they may be forced to ration access to the internet because surging electricity prices makes the energy intensive business of operating the networks on which mobile phones rely uneconomical.
The demand for change from the businesses comes after the UK’s left-wing Labour government announced the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS), a subsidy for critical businesses’ energy prices to keep them competitive while a mixture of world events and government policy makes power more expensive than practically anywhere else on earth. Telecoms isn’t on the approved list of industries earmarked for energy price support under the package.
This leaves the telecoms companies in something of a bind: they are classed as critical national infrastructure and are required to maintain constant service as part of their government license to operate and use radio spectrum, but face doing so as government-engineered circumstances damage their ability to operate.
According to the three telecoms companies issuing their warning to government that energy is becoming so expensive they may struggle to provide universal high-speed data, in a “worst case scenario” they could ration access to mobile data by throttling speeds, restricting access at peak times, or introduce surge pricing to customers, reports The Daily Telegraph. Business Matters Magazine states the services most likely to be cut first are video calls and mobile data, but even backbone-tier infrastructure like terrestrial broadband networks, which in most cases are operated by the same companies, might be rationed too.
After years of mergers and acquisitions, there are only three real mobile phone operators in the United Kingdom, with the remaining dozens of operators simply reselling virtual cell coverage from the main providers. The three, which all joined this appeal to the government, are Anglo-Hong Kong owned Vodafone Three, the Anglo-Spanish-Dutch owned Virgin Media O2 group, and the British-owned BT Group. All businesses have reported as being healthily profitable in recent years.
It is reported a spokesman for Virgin Media O2 pointed specifically to their network being “critical national infrastructure that almost every consumer and business relies on” and called on the government to prioritise the resilience of the country.
While mobile data is a valued creature comfort for consumers, the ubiquity and reliability of modern telecommunications has seen it integrated in many of the systems that underpin modern life, and particularly in urban contexts. A day-long outage of the O2 network in 2018 saw over 30 million users unable to connect to data, send text messages, or place phone calls, causing transport chaos in London as services like buses and taxis lost their real-time tracking. Payment systems also stumbled as many card payment terminals rely on mobile data to function.
In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, cell providers warned then-feared energy shortages over the following winter would risk bringing down mobile networks continent-wide. Such events were tested for real in Spain and Portugal last year, when a massive total power cut across the entire Iberian Peninsula saw practically every service and business without on-site diesel generators go black. “Much of the country’s digital infrastructure” ceased to function during the outage, with Spanish internet usage plunging to 17 per cent of regular traffic.
Any future outage — planned or unplanned — could impact even further in the United Kingdom. The government is presently in the process of replacing the old Airwave radio systems used by the emergency services with a new “critical communication system”, the “Emergency Services Network” (ESN). While the ESN traffic is encrypted and private to the intended users, it will be carried on the regular, public BT-EE mobile phone network.
This is cheaper as the emergency services have been able to dispense with paying for their own radio infrastructure, but increases fragility as police forces, ambulance services, and the fire brigades could lose the ability to communicate during a broader crisis event.
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