Ok so a public survey with 4,205 responses, if the usual rules followed it should hopefully scale to the population.

65% on the make/receive calls, but 29% say they don't have a landline.

If the 29% is correct for residential and the figures don't skew when moved to households we get

8.3 million households without a landline and 20 million households with a landline.

Based on the market data Ofcom report they say 26.6 million residential lines, which is more like 93%.

The difference may be people who have a landline but do not have a telephone at all. Unfortunately survey does not appear to make that distinction.

The suggest if the 93% and 65% are correct then is that lots of people already are happy relying on mobiles for emergency calls. So maybe targeting the emergency power support at a much smaller group i.e. vulnerable groups may be the way forward.

There seems to be a huge variation in figures re the number of installed landlines.
Ofcom's own 2017 Technology Tracker (p2) suggests a figure of 82% !

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/multi-sec...

However, whatever the accurate figure, my concern is about resilience during widespread power outages where cellular base stations stop working after an hour or so.

Have we learnt the lessons of Lancaster? I doubt it.

If and when my landline ceases to be exchange powered, I'll be installing a back up that ensures continuity

What appears to be needed is more resilient backup arrangements for cellular base stations including swapping out batteries where necessary in much the same way as Openreach does with its FTTC cabs when there are local power failures.

I have never understood why the DECT phones do not have some form of way of maintaining a connection when power drops. As the power block should only be required to charge the battery in the phone. But I guess the manufactures think otherwise.
Personally as to power cuts, and I used to look after a vulnerable person. I always found mobiles to be better as you got far more updates via twitter or such social media. Where they can mass feed updates. Rather than attempting to keep phoning every so often.

Do we need the provision to power modems etc in the event of power cuts?
Again mobile works well, can be easily charged. So as long as there is access to the internet via mobile it's OK.

If Ofcom want these new regulations in place. Then they need to make sure that not just BT (for want of another name) but every other provider Virgin & mobile etc also have to provide exactly the same lever of backup.

In reply to a post by JohnR:

I have never understood why the DECT phones do not have some form of way of maintaining a connection when power drops. As the power block should only be required to charge the battery in the phone. But I guess the manufactures think otherwise.

That would require a battery in the base station, which raises several questions.

Bearing in mind that making the connection to the line itself is not the issue, off the top of my head:

- its capacity bearing in mind the need for always-on wireless contact with a variable number of sleeping slaves;
- handling a call that could go on for well over an hour;
- similarly wrt multiple slaves on the call;
- again similarly, handling intercom calls of varying length and frequency.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 30-May-18 22:15:36)

The real life situation in the Lancaster power cut in 2015 was that all mobile phone coverage ceased. There is no requirement for cellular base stations to continue working during a prolonged mains failure.

Landlines continued to work but with no mains power there was no internet access as modem/routers were off.

Our infrastructure is increasingly mains-power dependent.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

That would require a battery in the base station, which raises several questions.

My DECT phone runs from the same UPS as the computer, router and modem

In the event of a power cut I shut down the computer (and use the laptop if I need the internet), the UPS will keep everything else running for at least an hour (I haven't checked the maximum time).

If it runs out of time and there's no mobile signal I'll rummage around for the corded phone... all it takes is a bit of forward planning

Edited by billford (Wed 30-May-18 23:04:19)

Adding a backup battery to the base would surely be the easiest option,. In my case when there is a power cut all the handsets soon run down their batteries as they are sitting there constantly searching for the missing base with the backlight turned on (I have tried to find a setting to disable the backlight but failed). But as said I can easily plug in my traditional corded phone (which of course will no longer work when everything is VOIP!).

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Ok so a public survey with 4,205 responses, if the usual rules followed it should hopefully scale to the population.

65% on the make/receive calls, but 29% say they don't have a landline.

If the 29% is correct for residential and the figures don't skew when moved to households we get

8.3 million households without a landline and 20 million households with a landline.

Based on the market data Ofcom report they say 26.6 million residential lines, which is more like 93%.

The difference may be people who have a landline but do not have a telephone at all. Unfortunately survey does not appear to make that distinction.

The suggest if the 93% and 65% are correct then is that lots of people already are happy relying on mobiles for emergency calls. So maybe targeting the emergency power support at a much smaller group i.e. vulnerable groups may be the way forward.

I wouldn�t trust any kind of survey about landlines. Go on the Ofcom figures. Virgin Media still usually install a landline for new customers (correct me if I�m wrong) and obviously Openreach do.

If you ask a lot of people if they have a landline they�ll say no. Even though they absolutely do. As they don�t associate their broadband with a landline. You wouldn�t believe the amount of people that don�t know their broadband comes down a landline (people on the Openreach network I mean).

What they mean is that they don�t have a phone plugged in, so to them they have no landline.

The amount of installed lines figure is the one to go off, is that the 82% figure? That feels much more accurate to me. In fact I would have thought even higher than that but clearly not.

Edited by deleted (Thu 31-May-18 08:39:27)

Around here many people on VM, (ex-NTL and originally Nynex), say they don�t have a landline because their phone is through Virgin Cable. They automatically assume landline=BT, sometimes not even Openreach.

As you say, these surveys are often highly suspect.

The increasingly high number of none-installed could very well be down to bed-sitters and short-term flat-dwellers, particularly in London and to some extent other major cities.