In reply to a post by hoopla:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

What is worth noting is that in my last power cut (about 4 years ago) the local mast for EE and Three went out as well, and the next nearest were overloaded, couldn't make calls or get internet. My work phone on Vodafone using a mast over the dual carriageway wasn't affected and kept working.

This is not as bad as you assume. If you had tried to make an emergency call, the "overloaded" cells would have found you capacity.

This thread contains a statement somewhere that NO calls were possible including 999.

Then purchase a suitable router. You shouldn't be limited by what you already own. Do we know what equipment you have?

I have a very old Dell Studio 1555 with only 11g wifi. Suitable for most surfing but large downloads require me to plug the ethernet cable in.

Vigor 2862Vac which you would have thought would be good enough but apparently only handles about 220mbps as its max. Probably OK for me so no point in upgrading hardware are subscriber to a speed that the router can't handle.

Sure, take a cheaper 80/20 or 150/30 FTTP service: it's more than enough for most households.

Most services these days come with an ISP-supplied router though.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

This thread contains a statement somewhere that NO calls were possible including 999.

If you're commenting on my experience, I did NOT try to make an emergency call.

Edited by jchamier (Tue 06-Apr-21 19:07:14)

Maybe a reference to a posting I made before the chip on my shoulder attracted attention (although I prefer to call it an aversion to people talking down to me). We have minimal mobile signal in our village (which depends a lot on atmospheric conditions). During a recent power outage an ambulance had to be called several hours after the start of the outage with no mobile signal in evidence. Without the copper landline and wired phone assistance could not have been called unless someone left the village to find a mobile signal.

As the copper network goes from stop sell to retirement, the expectation is that comms providers (ISPs basically) provide a solution for voice over fibre - (Voice over IP) - or as the case may be for the customer to organise this themselves with a third party VOIP provider.

Openreach no longer want to have direct responsibility for voice services. They no longer have a telephony port on the ONT and correspondingly they removed the battery backup unit from the ONT.

It’s quite a sea change in affairs. Fibre deployment is accelerating, copper is definitely going and with it ‘default’ voice service. I don’t really think the industry have communicated this very well up to now. They will definitely need to collectively step up...

https://player.vimeo.com/video/505623546

Openreach recently published the initial list of 220 areas that will begin copper stop sell from this June and presumably fully retired 2 years later. Let’s hope that as they move through that process and push to the next block of areas, plans are in place or get developed to support vulnerable customers or communities as fibre deployments accelerate and copper is retired.

Your particular situation with 12 hour power cuts, patchy mobile service made worse with atmospheric impairment sounds particularly challenging
though!

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

Without the copper landline and wired phone assistance could not have been called unless someone left the village to find a mobile signal.

I hope you (and other areas in similar situation) are supported by Ofcom so that the end of PSTN does not occur until sufficient provision is made. e.g. you get cellular coverage from two independent networks. I wonder if the lack of cellular coverage was caused by planning decisions in the last 2 decades, which has happened in a few villages around here.

Did they transition between the copper pair in the combined drop wire and internal copper with Gel Crimps in the CSP?

Cheers!

Left unconnected at my end. No intention to use copper.