Power Cuts and Digital Voice aka VoIP

Elsewhere on this forum, discussions take place on UPS solutions for VoIP. It seems that for about £100 you can have the assurance of continued use of Digital Voice for around 24 hours and for most of the time, that is more than adequate for infrequent, short duration, power cuts but what about beyond that when exceptional weather conditions hit? This situation has been highlighted with this news item: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-59564480.

If the link doesn't work it talks about power cuts caused by Storm Arwen highlighted a potentially lethal problem in the home phone network's digital transformation. Traditional landlines are being phased out in favour of broadband-enabled phones reliant on electricity. As hundreds of thousands of households across northern England lost power, people in remote areas without a mobile reception were left unable to call for help.

Now I accept that POTS are well past their EOL with increasing maintenance necessary and the ever increasing costs of the real estate of telephone exchanges, This is compounded by a massive shift of calls away from the landline to the mobile network. Well it is reasonable for VoIP to take on the role for those desiring a traditional phone service and for the consumer that is very often a huge financial benefit in embracing VoIP, that is until disaster strikes.

So how do you provide resilience for the once in a decade event that knocks your phone service out for a week or more, including your mobile phone service if indeed it was there in the first place? UPS doesn't seem to cut it for those circumstances. If an always on voice service is a necessity, say for a passenger lift, is the end user expected to equip himself with a portable generator? I love to know the answer to this one?

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

UPS doesn't seem to cut it for those circumstances. If an always on voice service is a necessity, say for a passenger lift

Your link has an extra . as part of the link, you may find this works.

As for the passenger lift example, e.g. in a domestic block of flats, there will be an equipment room so there would be place for a 24hr battery supply. Lifts are required (by law) to be maintained and such emergency call out services would have to be part of this service.

The Cumbria example where there is no mobile reception I thought was also being looked at by Government. I'm surprised that when there are power cuts due to trees falling through power lines, they don't also take out the phone lines. In rural areas often sharing the same poles.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The Cumbria example where there is no mobile reception I thought was also being looked at by Government. I'm surprised that when there are power cuts due to trees falling through power lines, they don't also take out the phone lines. In rural areas often sharing the same poles.

Many other areas have no mobile coverage. There are certainly sections of Swaledale in North Yorkshire which have no coverage from any network, commercially it is not a viable proposition.

Phone services can share poles with LV mains services (230/400V) to premises, not the HV (11/20/33kV) distribution which took the brunt of the recent damage.

In reply to a post by tdw42:

Phone services can share poles with LV mains services (230/400V) to premises, not the HV (11/20/33kV) distribution which took the brunt of the recent damage.

Thanks, the pictures show the lower voltage cabling, but can't trust those

Its difficult because at some point in very long term power disruptions, whatever you provide is going to run out...of battery, of petrol/diesel, etc.

The only sustainable long term approach would be to perhaps have something like a small solar panel, that topping up a small lead-acid storage battery. That could, even on a cloudy winters day (or several if its sized appropriately) provide enough juice for some basic CPE/router/phone etc.

I have done the off-grid solar thing a few time now and it works fine, as long as the loads aren't too high compared to the solar you're able to capture.

The low voltage power lines to our house come underground, not sure how the step down transformer a few hundred yards down the road is fed.
Having a motorhome with 150Ah of batteries and a solar panel, we have some resilient if things turn really bad, although the solar doesn't produce much at this time of year.
Are you ready for a surprising answer to future resilience? Well that's an electric car! If it's got a good size battery and V2H or V2L, you can keep your phone going for weeks, you can even power your home for days, and if a charger is within say 50 miles, you could power you home indefinitely by shuttling back and forth every couple of days!

In reply to a post by burble:

Are you ready for a surprising answer to future resilience? Well that's an electric car!

Assuming you have a drive to park it and keep it plugged in. Those of us in flats are kinda losing out again

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by burble:

Are you ready for a surprising answer to future resilience? Well that's an electric car!

Assuming you have a drive to park it and keep it plugged in. Those of us in flats are kinda losing out again

Ah well, bike and a dynamo it is then. 😝

I’m amazed that Ofcom has allowed BT/OR to move forward with their plans without ensuring that access to 999 services is maintained. UPS/Battery backup simply does not cover this type of incident. POTS could maintain cover as long as the phone line was intact and the exchange had power but VOIP offers nothing. No power at the customer means no 999 cover now. OR apparently can’t get enough of the necessary batteries and Ofcom assumed power cuts would be less than 1 hour and that 2G coverage would be available. Both have now been proved incorrect in these storm damaged areas.

My home was badly affected by the storm of 1987 and lost power for many days. We only lost the phones for a few hours once the batteries there died but only until a generator was then brought in to power the exchange. No mobiles in those days either.

Have Ofcom and OR misunderstood the real risk, and are their assumptions just based upon bad data? Will there now need to be a rethink on the VOIP rollout and transition to fibre only circuits? It seems a bit odd to me that such an obvious thing has been missed or ignored.

And at present many cars can charge a phone via USB.

My experience is that when the power goes down in a rural area due to wind the phone lines go down as well.

Certainly they were restoring both at the same time in N England and Scotland so it didn't really matter whether it was VOIP or PSTN.