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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.
Solved! Go to Correct 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.
Hello, TheronGrumps. I do hope the power outage has been corrected in your area. Yes, cell service may be temporarily lost or degraded in some areas during a power outage. Has service returned? Please let us know.
-Natasha
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.
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