The decreasing resiliency of the phone system to power failures is a
> real problem that nobody seems to be addressing.
> It used to be all basic telephones were powered by the central office
> which had diesel generators to recharge the batteries in case of
> commercial failure. While the likelihood of a power failure is fairly
> low, nasty storms or power company failures do create local outages
> that can last for 24-48 hours. During such an outage telephone
> service is especially critical since roads may be blocked. PBXs had
> batteries and hand generators for ringing.
> It seems most people at home have cordless phones powered by house
> current. How long, if at all, will such phones last in a power
> failure? People are supposed to have a plain landline phone, but do > they?
> But I wonder today how many business PBXs have any battery backup at
> all for both talk and ringing, especially for an extended period of > time.
A quick and cheap fix for a small to medium sized business is to run the first two CO pairs up to the receptionist's desk, connect them to modular jacks and leave a couple of POTS unplugged under the desk for emergencies. I've done this at a couple places where I worked and it was greatly appreciated.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Even in a residence with PBX-like service. I am no fool (although some people say I look and act like one), and in my computer room, where the phone lines come in from outside to the PBX box on the wall, I have a couple of terminal boxes there as well, tapping the outside line. We do not have that many power outages (I am three blocks down the street from our municipal electric grid), but I do get a few outages, i.e. phone service through the PBX goes off (as do the computers, etc). I take one spare phone and plug it into that box, and get reliable Sage Telecom service. (Sage replaced Prairie Stream several months ago.) I am reminded: if you are _anywhere_ in the old SBC Southwestern Bell operating territory you can get Sage Telecom for about half of what you paid to SBC with a lot less grief as well. Sage certainly does not lie as SBC used to do either. Check them out and let me know how it works for you. Sage is basically a UNI-type operation, just as Prairie Stream was before Ma Bell put them out of business, but Sage is much larger than Prairie Stream ever was, even being part of Terra World. PAT]