No Cell Service During Power Outage

Question

Hello,

Today (April 30, 2024) the power in my area went out a couple of times. And during those outage times the cell service in my area also went down.

I reset my 5G a few times but still nothing went through. I thought at least I would be able to make calls even if internet went down but I couldn’t even do that.

Is this a normal occurrence  during power outages? My family members have different carriers and some were affected while others still had 5G and cell service.

SynthpopAddict · Accepted Answer

Cell phone towers operate on the power grid, and not all towers have a backup power supply in place should the electricity go out.  Depending on the extent of a power outage, not all the towers in an area could be affected as it could be just one major circuit on the grid having a problem, so anything not on that circuit is fine.  Different carriers may or may not share towers - it used to be each carrier had their own towers but that's changing.

If a tower is running on backup power, 5G will be shut down as it uses more power and only whatever the lowest-powered LTE band is functional.