All FTTC cabinets have batteries that kick in in the event of a power cut.
Your car battery trick should be no different.

Not been a huge amount of #penisnow this year (local gag). Can still see plenty on the Pentlands from my window.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

All FTTC cabinets have batteries that kick in in the event of a power cut.
Your car battery trick should be no different.

It's for the odd occasions where it's more than an hour or two, past the life of the cabinet batteries. Pretty rare occurrence now - last snow-in we had was 4 days or so, and the power stayed on right through.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

#penisnow

Stay Classy, Penicuik.

The cabinet batteries can last a good 8 hours, and should be regularly swapped during an extended power outage.

I've seen a number of cases where the DSLAM has lost power and excluding the 5 minute downtime to change the batteries there was no downtime for the users involved.

I have also read stories of DSLAM batteries lasting only 4 hours.

Battery time on the DSLAM obviously depends on how much power it is using, which goes up with the number of users connected to it.

Well, today was The Day.

Openreach bloke turned up, had a quick look in the house to see what he was faced with, went off to the cabinet, then back to the house to install a new master socket. All done in under an hour.

And the results?

Before
https://www.speedtest.net/result/9033375015

After
https://www.speedtest.net/result/9054186968

Syncing at 77-78 Mbps. What a result!

Many, many thanks to everyone that's offered advice and assistance, and Kudos to Andrew for his ability to overturn "computer says no" responses.

Excellent.

shut

Welcome to the modern world!

Now don't go trying to download the internet all at once, there is plenty of time to pick and choose