Digital Roll out

geordieguy

Here in Teneterden Kent we were hit with storm and being digital telephone line so for 17hrs had no electric or internet and no mobile signal too due to the storm.

Why are they still rolling this out?

what happens if there was an emergency?

Can anyone help?

unforeseen

Are you assuming that the local exchange wasn't affected? Exchanges don't have infinite backup power so the exchange would fail after a few hours as well. 

Neil_Jones

geordieguy said:

Here in Teneterden Kent we were hit with storm and being digital telephone line so for 17hrs had no electric or internet and no mobile signal too due to the storm.

Why are they still rolling this out?

what happens if there was an emergency?

Can anyone help?

The exchange does not run on fresh air, it will have some level of backup power, but that won't run forever.  The backup power source will run out, but the backup it providers will cover 95% of all outages.  A huge storm that knocked out a substation somewhere will be classed as force majeure.

And no mobile signal during a storm will be force majeure.  Simple as.  if it came back after the storm left, then I'm not really sure what your issue is.  if you need to use a mobile phone and there is no signal on your main network the phone will jump on any network it can see whether you're a member of not.  So providing there is signal of some sort again its a moot point.

Or failing that we have these amazing things called legs, and a concept of using your Initiative.  If a message needed to be gotten out, then it can almost certainly be done one way or another.

Carrot007

So to get to the important point:

Q. Why are they wanting to get rid of a old tech that is expensive to maintain?

A. Becuase people are not willing to pay enough to maintain it.

Many people do not want it. It is not as perfect as you think it is. I'm sure if the remaining people why want it would pay £500 a month they would do it. Are you prepared to pay that?

littleboo

As above, the existing phone system dates from the 80's and is end of life. You cant maintain old equipment for ever, parts aren't available and its prohibitively expensive.  

matelodave

If you are really concerned get yourself a back-up supply for your router but even then, in the case of a prolonged outage, it's likely that it would have insufficient capacity for more than a couple of hours unless you were prepared to install some pretty hefty batteries and a generator.

As said above, mobile phone base stations, telephone exchanges and optical street cabinets are all provided with battery back-up supplies. However, even then they would only be able to maintain services for a limited time.

I'd guess something like 4-8 hours where the backup is dependent on batteries (like street cabinets, mobile base stations and small exchanges) and a bit longer where there were local fossil fuelled engine driven generators like at data centres or major telephone exchanges. However even these will have a limit on how much fuel is available to maintain service for a very protracted outage.

Being irritated because you've lost a phone connection probably pales into insignificance when it comes down to hospitals and the like losing their power, or even where I live in the fens where the flood defences are are all electrically powered. Dont forget those who's heating has gone off and cant make any hot food and the loss of a phone becomes pretty trivial.