The advice to use a mobile phone is a classic example of the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. A great many of the newer base stations (that all mobile phones require)  are not battery backed up and depend, guess what, on the local  substation for power ! 

It is true that some larger base stations (generally the ones that serve as a hub to a group of base stations or share a site that already has back-up) do have some battery arrangement or even in a few cases self starting diesel generation, but to install proper back up power has not been a requirement for some time, and so now tends not to be done.  Now it may be that the failure of one substation  can be called in, because there is a  base station in range of the handset which happens to be on another LV transformer, but rota power cuts would appear to be based on the HV areas, and so larger areas of many tens of miles across all go off together. Only folk at the very edge  of zone can expect a mobile phone connection of any kind, and ones running on emergency power are designed to drop back to a low power mode with reduced performance, and in some cases emergency calls only. In a cut of any duration, you may be able to contact more people by carrying   a hand bell or whistle.

Actually  some folk have been wondering abut this for a while... https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2121314/mobile-netwroks-and-power-cuts

Mike

The advice to use a mobile phone is a classic example of the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. A great many of the newer base stations (that all mobile phones require)  are not battery backed up and depend, guess what, on the local  substation for power ! 

It is true that some larger base stations (generally the ones that serve as a hub to a group of base stations or share a site that already has back-up) do have some battery arrangement or even in a few cases self starting diesel generation, but to install proper back up power has not been a requirement for some time, and so now tends not to be done.  Now it may be that the failure of one substation  can be called in, because there is a  base station in range of the handset which happens to be on another LV transformer, but rota power cuts would appear to be based on the HV areas, and so larger areas of many tens of miles across all go off together. Only folk at the very edge  of zone can expect a mobile phone connection of any kind, and ones running on emergency power are designed to drop back to a low power mode with reduced performance, and in some cases emergency calls only. In a cut of any duration, you may be able to contact more people by carrying   a hand bell or whistle.

Actually  some folk have been wondering abut this for a while... https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2121314/mobile-netwroks-and-power-cuts

Mike

mapj1 said:

you may be able to contact more people by carrying   a hand bell or whistle

We didn't always have telephones. There was a time when if somebody was taken ill, they would get a lad to run to the doctor. Of course doctor would have been one of the first to have a telephone, but that still wouldn't have helped ordinary folk without one.

I suppose that if you are nervous about the situation, you could get a satellite 'phone.