No power, no telephone, not even 999

[Astra99]

After a brown-out cost me a couple of hours of work, I bought a 1000VA UPS. The PC, monitor, broadband router and NAS are connected to this UPS, with the printers connected directly to the mains. In the event of power failure, with the PC and monitor switched off, the router (and NAS) should run for several hours at least, thus permitting calls to be made, provided the phone handset is also powered from the UPS. As the phone is only drawing around 10W, this should not adversely affect the time the UPS is able to maintain power. It's a pity you can't shut off the beep every 5 seconds that the UPS emits when mains power fails!

 

[morqthana]

BT, and the industry regulator Ofcom, say PSTN equipment is becoming harder and more expensive to maintain and new digital technology is needed to secure the future of our phone services.

Surely you meant to write "BT, and the industry regulator Ofcom, who parrot whatever the comms companies tell them, say...."?

 

[morqthana]

If you rely on your landline for accessibility needs or don’t have a mobile to make an emergency call we’ll provide you with an emergency back up line so you’re always able to call emergency services.

Even if you have a mobile, and are perfectly happy to go along with the decision to force you to rely on it, you can easily find that when TSHTF in terms of a disaster like a flood or severe storm the mobile network goes out, either because of the disaster, or because it can't cope with the load of tens of thousands of people all trying to use it at once.

 

[morqthana]

At the time I was on part of the development staff - we were told by management the process was halted because OfCom deemed it anti competitive.

Was that during the hitherto (and subsequently) unknown period when OfCom had both teeth and a willingness to bite, or was it in the same category as BL bosses blaming unions for stoppages when in fact they had engineered them to cover up their own incompetence?

 

[Diver Fred]

Was that during the hitherto (and subsequently) unknown period when OfCom had both teeth and a willingness to bite, or was it in the same category as BL bosses blaming unions for stoppages when in fact they had engineered them to cover up their own incompetence?

'92/'93