Geelong is a seaside town in Victoria, Australia 47 miles south-west of Melbourne. Mobile phones play an important role in communication, and they have 228 phone towers serving 194,000 residents. Since nobody wants a tower in their backyard, these are often in isolated places. The system relies on lithium phone tower batteries to keep it going when grid power is down.
Serial Thieves are Stealing Geelong Phone Tower Batteries
The Geelong Advertiser reports that 52 mobile phone tower batteries weighing up to 80 kilograms each, disappeared since the start of May 2018. They believe a single gang of thieves is responsible for stealing 24 phone tower lithium batteries from Fyanfords between May 5 and 6 because of clues found.
On May 31, the thieves struck again, this time removing 12 batteries from Cressy. Then they struck again 3 hours later and stole 16 phone tower batteries from Buckley. The thieves may not be aware of the critical role these batteries perform, although we doubt it. If a storm took the grid down, they could be the only channel for distressed people to call for help. Surely they know this.
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How Long Could Those Geelong Batteries Have Lasted
A mobile phone tower is a mast, or other structure supporting antennae and other electronic communications equipment for relaying mobile digital data. The associated digital signal processors, control electronics, and GPS receivers are expensive.
This begs the question whether the mobile phone towers and batteries should not have better security protection. The Geelong Advertiser reports the affected batteries could keep the Greelong sites running for several hours without mains electrical power.
Where mains power is more intermittent, renewable power sources could kick in. In this case, we believe the last-resort secondary batteries should last for as long as 5 days without replenishing. This should provide sufficient time for repair teams to visit remote sites, and effect the necessary repairs timeously.
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