We lost power for about a week after straight line winds ("derecho") hit the
area. At the time all of our Comcast gear (cable & internet) were on home
office type UPS backed-up power.
We lost Comcast internet about four hours after the power went out. The cable
modem status page said there were upstream and downstream carriers but there
was no connection to the internet.
Cell service (AT&T) became very spotty 6 to 8 hours into the outage, although
it did improve after several days.
The Verizon POTS line (copper circuit) worked properly throughout the entire
power outage (of course). When the Verizon folks knock on our door and try to
get us to switch to FIOS I tell them this story before I say "no thanks".
Jim Albro
----- Reply message -----
From: "Mark Schubin" <tvmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [opendtv] Re: TV Technology: Copper Landline Decline Visualized
Date: Tue, May 16, 2017 9:24 PM
Hope you don't get a blow that knocks off cell-site antennas. That was
a problem during superstorm Sandy.
TTFN,
Mark
On 5/16/2017 5:47 PM, John Shutt (Redacted sender shuttj for DMARC) wrote:
My land line is from Comcast Cable, and I do have to provide a battery
backup for my cable modem, but the rest of the Comcast system uses a
distributed battery backup system to maintain operations in the event
of a power outage.
I don't worry about it, because during every previous power outage, my
cell phone continued to work.
John
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Schubin" <tvmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2017 4:17 PM
Subject: [opendtv] Re: TV Technology: Copper Landline Decline Visualized
POTS central offices traditionally provided BORSCHT functions:
battery, overvoltage-protection, ringing, supervision, coding,
hybrid, and testing.
Take away copper and you also take away the B: phones no longer work
during a power blackout.
Verizon recently converted my landline from copper to fiber. I can't
get a definitive answer to how much power the optical terminal
draws. Online they say "no more than two night lights." Based on
the power supply, it could be as much as 30 watts. So I'm now paying
the power company, too, for my phone service. The battery backup box
takes 12 D cells and provides "up to 20 hours" of service.
I wrote about this on LinkedIn and got many comments from people
whose phones had previously worked during disasters when they lost
power.
I understand the desire to move from copper to optical fiber, but, as
the article implies, without the B, it is not equivalent.
Also, there are two verbs in the sentence you find troubling, not a
verb and an adjective: "retire" refers to "copper;" "access" refers
to "utility poles."
TTFN,
Mark
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