Phone Lines

[wine~o]

wine~o

A very valid point and one which many have forgotten or never knew.
S0d's Law says that one's cell phone battery will have run flat at the same time as the leccy power cut.

Or if it's a largish power outage that nearest mobile phone masts will have no power either, happened here not long ago.

[gas4you]

Do they not have generators that kick in, in such times?

[wine~o]

Do they not have generators that kick in, in such times?

I really don't know. I can only tell you what happened here about a year ago ... power off, and no mobile signal. Mobile signal is normally 5 bars. Had to grope around looking for the old "emergency" phone.

[Someone-Else]

Look at the flip side. How often do you have a power cut?
Most places it is rare, and would a generator not be an additional expense? since it will need maintenance and will the fuel will need to be changed if it is not used for some time?
A cellular mast probably "looks after itself" since it has no moving parts. Also being as its cellular, that's a lot of generators and a lot of fuel sitting about doing nothing other than collecting water vapour. Probably cost prohibitive unless it is in some "far out place"

[wine~o]

probably 2 a year on average round here. There are still a lot of houses with split hobs, 2 gas rings 2 electric because the electric used to go off so regularly.

[sheilamary3]

I did buy a plug in phone during my extensive checks to make sure the fault wasnt on my side!!
It was only a basic cheapo but I have it should this occur again!

[gas4you]

Well perhaps I am a bit old fashioned in stating generators these days.


But I can see why each mast/cabinet can't have a ups back built in that would last a few hours.

Perhaps Tim'llfixit knows the answer?

[village idiot]

Back in the days when I used to visit telephone exchanges the reason I was there was to test the storage tanks for the backup generators, there were a few I visited out in the sticks that were battery only, the memorable one was a BT radio station on Shankhill Road, 400Ah battery made up of 2V lead acid cells with a load of 7A.
With regard to cellphone masts, I have not had dealings with any but would suspect they would have limited battery backup

[Timllfixit]

Most of the cell sites have generator back up, usually for a minimum of 24 hours, and also batteries for a few hours after that. Diesel units aren't that big these days, and of course the kit requires less power than it did.
AFAIK the DSLAMs in the street cabinets( that supply the "Fibre" broadband) are purely mains driven, but there are a few different manufactures and I don't know for certain off the top of my head.

[Dave54]

Funny thing. I got talking to a bloke in the pub last night. Him and another bloke are down here working on putting backup generators into cell sites. It's what they do, travel around the country retro fitting backup gennys.
I did ask him if "they" know something we don't. He said they had wondered about that themselves.