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.