In an emergency, you’re supposed to call 112. But what if you can’t get through?
That’s one of the many questions that arose after the major outage at Post the week before last. Even national roaming wouldn’t have helped in this case, says the technical head of Tango, Luxembourg’s second-largest telecom operator after Post.
In an interview with RTL, Gilles Mulheims explained that the outage at Post affected the “core network” – the central hub from which all telecommunications originate. If it had just been the radio network, national roaming could have allowed Post customers to continue communicating. However, he warned that Tango and Orange’s networks likely wouldn’t have had the capacity to handle the load, as Post has significantly more customers, and they alone couldn’t have managed it.
Nevertheless, Tango’s technical chief pointed out that normally, anyone can switch networks on their mobile phone. In such a case, while you might not be able to call friends or family, you can still reach 112. “The standard for mobile telephony ensures that, under any circumstances and with any provider worldwide, emergency calls can be made,” he said. During the incident, Tango recorded calls from Post SIM cards going through their network. “So it’s not just theory. It really does work in practice,” said Mulheims.
So what does Gilles Mulheims recommend to individuals or policymakers? Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – or rather, not all your connections on one SIM card. Is he saying this just to sell Tango services? He laughs, and says: “No, there are other providers too.” It’s simply a fact, he adds, that this is the best way to stay connected in case of outages.
According to Mulheims, you can never be fully protected from failures or attacks that lead to outages. He believes Post reacted quickly in this situation.
Having more SIM cards is thus more secure. More software, on the other hand, is not. The Tango CTO warns that relying on more software could lead to compatibility issues and would require a large number of specialized staff to manage.
