Digital Voice - 999 in power cuts

[iniltous]

In rural areas , where power outages are most common , telephone lines more often than not , are not underground, they are also overhead, if the economics of providing the electricity supply requires it to be delivered overhead , then the same economic circumstances usually dictate that the phone/internet supply will also be overhead, if your power is overhead but your ‘phone’ supply is underground, that’s not the norm , but is irrelevant anyway .

The rest of your somewhat rambling post has nothing to do with DV and outages , and seems to be an unrelated rant about the people you report power outages to , if you were on  DV and had a BBU/UPS the call you apparently made , would still be possible, that’s what the topic is , 999 during a power outage , and although your call wasn’t frivolous, it’s not a call requiring  attention from the ‘blue light’ emergency services.

[WSH]

A lot of the canal boats around me have suitcase sized portable generators usually with outputs around 1-1.5kW.  Just an idea.

[Saighdear]

Thnx, We have generators coming out of our ears: How big do you want? Wee ones to Welder Generators AND Workshop standard sizes ( 3-phase) and plenty spare Batteries ....   It's just the Principle of the thing  - and who wants to go out in middle of night and a terrible storm to connect up.  ( We share end of line with 2 other households which do NOT have generators)    

As far as the Highlands ( & Islands) of Scotland is concerned ( when did I last notice overhead Telephone lines anywhere alongside any roads? ), our Immediate supply line is overhead from the Transformer but UNDERGROUND to it so another previous expert is talking absolute nonsense !!

[JohnGeddesWinster]

Update, Feb 2024

I have called BT on three occasions about Battery Backup Units (BBU) for customers in our village who are on Digital Voice/Cloud Voice but have no indoor mobile signal on any network.

The two calls to the Business side of BT each received a point blank refusal to supply a BBU (despite Ofcom insisting that they were supposed to). But complaints to the Chairman's Office (who answer questions sent to the CEO) in each case produced a goodwill credit to cover the cost.

The one call on the residential side was better. The agent understood the need, but we did end up at something of an impasse over the categorisation of the account - the agent kept wanting me to confirm that the customer was "vulnerable", while I was sure that I only needed to show that they were "at risk" as defined by Ofcom - and you are "at risk" simply by not having a mobile phone signal at home.

The second wobbly was that the procedure is that BT gives a credit for the cost (£88.99 from memory) and then the next bill will include the cost of the unit, and the credit, so a net of zero. But after agreeing this, I got two emails, each informing me that there would be a credit of a different amount (£22.99 and £25.99, from memory). But only two, and totalling nothing near the cost of the BBU. When I queried this, the explanation was that they couldn't authorise the full credit in one go, so would credit it in four chunks. I've seen no confirmation of the third and fourth credits, but perhaps all will resolve on the next bill. But what an amateurish setup!

The Battery Backup unit is promised to keep the router running for at least an hour. I realise that performance will deteriorate over the months and years, so I expected initial performance to be considerably more than an hour. But I was still very impressed to see that the BBU kept a  Plusnet Hub2 (on which I was testing it) running for 6 hours 46 minutes.

[COMPANY-PENSIONER]

In no way attempting to persuade you away from a BT BBU. UPS (uninterupted power supplies) are available at commercial electrical factors. Starting around, broadly, £100 inc vat. The more you pay, the longer the supply lasts in a power outage. Since the BT Fatplugs run on milliamps, the lower end of the UPS market will do nicely.

[patricia73]

I'm new to this so please excuse me if I seem irrelevant. My problem is that I have a vulnerable husband (had to call 999 earlier this month). We live in a town which is a notorious mobile signal black spot and which has a large elderly population. I've just been speaking to a very pleasant lady at bt, all she can do is sympathise and offer to put me to the back of the transfer list (presumably hoping my husband dies before we transfer). I don't think this is acceptable, technology is supposed to make life better and safer. Bt seems to have no answer to the problem and any attempt to contact them is made as difficult as possible. I cannot guarantee that my husband is able to time his episodes of ill health so that they don't coincide with our occasional power cuts.

[iniltous]

Presumably you have read this thread , so that begs the question, why have you resurrected an old post to ask a question that has already been comprehensively answered ? ,

[imjolly]

Have you registered your accountwkth BT  that a vulnerable person lives there as that should delay move to DV until 2027.  It is not BT who are stopping the ability to make receive calls over PSTN but openreach as the existing services are getting to expensive to maintain 

Is  it just your mobile provider provider that has problems in your area or all mobile providers as your  mobile will use any mobile network to make a 999 call

[JohnGeddesWinster]

Update August 2024:

Ofcom have confirmed that 999 calls made via another mobile network (ie over EE if you are on Vodafone) cannot later be returned by the emergency services: "When a mobile phone is outside the coverage of its "home" network, call to the phone will not be possible" (Ofcom Director General to my MP in answering my question about this, October 2023).

The Cyberpower unit supplied to BT customers who are "at risk" (eg no indoor mobile signal) is a good solution to the problem. I tried a brand new unit on a Plusnet Hub 2 router, and it provided 6h 45 of backup.

Finally, Ofcom's regulations on provision of a "solution" to the 999-in-a-power-cut problem appear to be totally unenforceable.

In March, I discovered that I could not reach 999 from my mobile having made a test call that failed.  I told my Broadband  provider (who also provided my VOIP) of this, asking them to provide a "solution" as prescribed by Ofcom's General Conditions A3.2(b).

My ISP refused, and gave me a month's notice to find a new ISP.

That would seem to fly in the face of the Ofcom intention - if any ISP can tell a customer with a problem to go away and see if they can find another ISP to solve the problem, then the Ofcom requirements are useless: the customer needing help with a Battery Backup Unit (or other "solution" to the problem) is not going to find anyone wanting them as a customer.

So I called Ofcom. I thought they might be interested to find someone openly refusing to follow their requirements. They politely wrote down details, then said they were unlikely to look into it. Instead, I should follow the Dispute Resolution system to make a complaint against my ISP.

My ISP was signed up to CISAS, so I complained to them. Many months later (lots of back-and-forth, with the ISP making one submission running to 26 pages), I have had my complaint refused.

The main ruling was that Ofcom's requirements are apparently not requirements. Just guidance to what it would be nice for an ISP to do. But the ISP is free not to do anything if they would rather not.

The secondary judgement was that I had not managed to provide evidence that I didn't have a reliable indoor mobile signal. I had provided the date and time of my failed 999 attempt, but this was apparently not enough. But there was no suggestion made of how I could have provided the necessary evidence. (I have since asked my mobile company, 1pmobile, what they would have been able to provide if I had asked them for evidence: the answer is nothing, as they only have details of chargeable calls, so wouldn't see data on even successful 999 calls.) 

So it appears either that Ofcom have been incompetent in drafting what they intend to be firm rules, or CISAS have got it wrong (there is no appeal, so I can't take it further) or that Ofcom deliberately wrote their requirements so that they sound tough (so reassure MPs etc) but opted to keep the industry happy by making sure that they proved to be unenforceable.

[garybs29]

I've heard it all now, attempting to tie up a life or death emergency 999 line with a "test call" words fail me