Mains power cuts and DigitalVoice

[Devon_Dave]

Openreach would not replace all the DSLAM batteries in an exchange area if all power was lost, just not enough batteries, engineers and charging facilities available. The batteries "should" last around 4 hours.

[JB2016]

@andywaring 

This Ofcom document provides information about back-up power for FTTC street cabinets.    Page 42 column 2 onwards:  BT cabinets = 4 hours minimum.    Read also on Page 44 about back-up power (or lack thereof) at mobile phone base stations.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/186413/Connected-Nations-2019-UK-final.pdf

More on power supply resilience in general at https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/living-without-electricity    ( at Page 8  )

[JB2016]

@andywaring 

More on this subject on these threads:

https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-phone-including-Digital/Digital-Voice-and-power-cuts-mitigation/td-...

https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-phone-including-Digital/Digital-voice-and-power-cuts/td-p/2161183

https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-phone-including-Digital/Unbreakable-voice/td-p/2204260

[Jane2018]

In essence it will be utterly dreadful. The country does not have the good wifi nor suitable power with no outages to make it safe to be force do on to digital voice and I hope the decision to move to it can be over turned.

[licquorice]

Wifi has absolutely nothing to do with it, Digital Voice doesn't use wifi. However, by 'wifi' I assume you actually mean broadband. If so, 2 things.

1 If your copper broadband fails, it is invariably because of a line fault, ergo your phone line also fails.

2. If you have a full fibre connection, it is far more resilient than the copper network.

[gg30340]

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@Jane2018 wrote:

In essence it will be utterly dreadful. The country does not have the good wifi nor suitable power with no outages to make it safe to be force do on to digital voice and I hope the decision to move to it can be over turned.

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I presume that you do not mean the whole of the UK but only the house you live in when you say " The country does not have the good wifi nor suitable power with no outages "  because I have excellent wifi and I have not had a power outage in my house for at least 15 years and I suspect many millions will be in the same position.

It should also be noted that the digital phone service does not use wifi to work.

See link for more useful information.

Digital Phone Lines | Openreach

The chances of the transfer to digital being cancelled/overturned is virtually zero.

Digital Phone Lines | Openreach

[Jane2018]

I have had more power cuts in this bit of outer London in the last 15 years than cuts to my landline (the latter is zero) but the UK more generally has just had massive power outages during the wind storm, some lasting days and days and our broadband still cuts out a few times every day on both separate wifi lines which I hope eventually BT will fix but they have tried and tried several times over the last 5 years and it never seems to be sorted out including for neighbours too

[gg30340]

I think you are confusing the terms broadband and wifi.

Your broadband is how the Internet is delivered to your property where it connects to your BT hub/router.  Once there you may be using wifi to have it distributed from your router to your devices or you could be connecting to your router by an Ethernet cable.

You can have wifi dropping out from the router with out the broadband dropping out but you can not have wifi from your router if your broadband drops out.

In the event of a power cut your router would not work because it obviously needs to be powered. However if you have a battery back up as has been suggested in this thread, your router would continue to work as would your broadband and as such so would your digital phone.

As regards the power outages, that is what this thread is about and has given information how this can in some cases be negated.  The power outages are without a doubt a problem but that is often a problem that power companies should address particularly if it is a frequent occurrence rather than when a massive storm occurs.

In any event digital voice is going ahead whether some people agree to it or not.

[Bob1001]

I have a large UPS (and expensive) that I use for my main computer and have also connected my hub to this, it does not help if the box in the road has no power and is an expensive option that will only power a limited amount of low consumption devices.

[JB2016]

Ofcom have initiated a programme to examine whether providers are taking all necessary measures in accordance with the rules for uninterrupted access to emergency organisations during a power cut:      https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/bulletins/competition-bulletins/open-cases/access-emerge...