A method for controlling an outage of a network element in a cellular network using an outage database, the outage database containing for each of a plurality of the network elements controlled by the cellular network at least the following network element dependent information: first operating parameters describing an error free operation of the corresponding network element, outage detection rules indicating when an outage for the corresponding network element is present, outage compensation rules indicating how the outage of the corresponding network element should be compensated, the outage compensation rules including compensation parameters to be used by compensating network elements (300b-300g) in order to compensate for the outage of one of the network elements, the method comprising the steps of: - continuously receiving current operating parameters for a plurality of network elements, - updating the first operating parameters and the outage detection rules for the plurality of network elements taking into account the current operating parameters, - detecting an outage for one of the network elements by comparing the received current operating parameters to the outage detection rules for said one network element, wherein if an outage is detected for said one network element, - determining and applying the outage compensation rules for said one network element, wherein applying the compensation rules includes optimizing the compensation parameters in order to calculate optimized operating parameters for the compensating network elements (300b-300g) used to compensate for the outage of said one network element, - evaluating the application of the compensation rules, and - storing the optimized operating parameters in the compensation rules as starting parameters for a future optimization of the compensation parameters in case of an outage of said one network element in dependence on the evaluation. - continuously receiving current operating parameters for a plurality of network elements, - updating the first operating parameters and the outage detection rules for the plurality of network elements taking into account the current operating parameters, - detecting an outage for one of the network elements by comparing the received current operating parameters to the outage detection rules for said one network element, wherein if an outage is detected for said one network element, - determining and applying the outage compensation rules for said one network element, wherein applying the compensation rules includes optimizing the compensation parameters in order to calculate optimized operating parameters for the compensating network elements (300b-300g) used to compensate for the outage of said one network element, - evaluating the application of the compensation rules, and - storing the optimized operating parameters in the compensation rules as starting parameters for a future optimization of the compensation parameters in case of an outage of said one network element in dependence on the evaluation. - determining and applying the outage compensation rules for said one network element, wherein applying the compensation rules includes optimizing the compensation parameters in order to calculate optimized operating parameters for the compensating network elements (300b-300g) used to compensate for the outage of said one network element, - evaluating the application of the compensation rules, and - storing the optimized operating parameters in the compensation rules as starting parameters for a future optimization of the compensation parameters in case of an outage of said one network element in dependence on the evaluation.