fios questions [telecom]

A friend with FIOS says the backup battery lasts about three hours in a power failure. Unfortunately, when a severe storm knocks out power for much longer periods there is no phone service until power is restored. Friends with cable-TV provided phone service also report no phone service during power outages. FWIW my traditional land-line has always remained available even during extended power outages.

Assuming you don't have too many of them, you should be OK.

That's a characteristic of the phone, not the phone line. They'll work as well as they ever did. If they all stop working at once, you'll need to make a one time fix and swap the wires where the FIOS box connects to the home wiring to make the polarity the same as it used to be.

Yes.

Every few years.

No, you're on your own. They don't do battery replacements.

A while. Hours, perhaps, depending on how old the battery is and how much stuff you have attached.

R's, John

Per Michael:

It's a matter of years, but I can't recall how many.

You pay, you replace....

Which segues into location: you want to lean on the FIOS guy to locate the indoor boxes in a place that is easy for you to get to.

Our first install, they hid it in the crawl space... Bad Idea. -)

On the second install (I can't recall what I said/did to get them to re-install but somehow they did it for no charge...) I had them put it in the rec room closet that also serves as my LAN/Server closet. Good Idea...

FIOS does generate real ring voltage, maybe not a full 130V RMS but enough for multiple 2500 sets. I assume it's 20 not 30 Hz but have not measured it. Kudos on owning the best phones ever made.

That they will; hook them up correctly & they will work fine. An ONT is not a step-office; it won't reverse polarity upon supervision.

The 2nd weakest aspect of FIOS is this. First, you are stuck buying new ones & installing them. Second, it lasts a few hours at most. What to do? Verizontal will never let you keep a POTS connection. They used to but now will laugh at you for trying. (You can only do so with a separate account in a different name.) If you live in an isolated area subject to long power failures, such as the 2 million people in Metro DC who were out for 4 days, then you will be SOL.

Note the ONT battery is an ordinary 13.8V one; there is nothing technically wrong with instead using a Wal-Mart 75A-H deep cycle battery, except you need to make the wires longer. (And the issue of spilling the battery, and such.) Don't tell Verizontal, of course....

Also note that when Reddy Kilowatt goes to sleep, you lose TV and Internet, battery or not. Some people think they thus should use a UPS to keep such going, but most UPSi have run times of a few hours at best, and the efficiency of using AC to make DC to turn back into AC so the ONT PSU can make DC....well guess.

Oh, the weakest aspect? Billing; they will be jacking up prices and changing rates and misbilling you monthly. Expect lots of pressure to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. She will also want you to drop your regulated phone service in favor of her stepsister's VOIP offering.

HAncock4 wrote: :On Aug 17, 5:18 am, Michael wrote: :> What about the backup battery in the FIOS box.? :> Does it need regular replacing? How often? Does Verizon charge for :> that? How long does it last in a power failure?

:A friend with FIOS says the backup battery lasts about three hours in :a power failure. Unfortunately, when a severe storm knocks out power :for much longer periods there is no phone service until power is :restored. Friends with cable-TV provided phone service also report no :phone service during power outages. FWIW my traditional land-line :has always remained available even during extended power outages.

That depends on where you are, and where you line is terminated. In many places, wires to the CO have largely been replaced with cables or fiber to a box in the neighborhood, that requires power. There is, or is supposed to be, battery backup in it, but how long it lasts is a crap shoot. In small outages, the telco can drive a generator trailer up to it, and it bigger, but still small, outages, can drive around and swap batteries. But in area wide outage, you're probably out of luck.

If I was offered FIOS, I'd jump - but with one proviso: They want you to sign the form, and buried in the Fine Print is the right to cut off ALL copper pairs to the house. They want to save money - but you aren't going to get Five-Nines Life-Safety reliability on FIOS.

I would insist on keeping one POTS line on a Copper Pair (without any Pair Gain or other tomfoolery) for the Alarm System RJ31X and dialer, and Fax if you have one, or a simple Desk Set if you don't. Do all the long distance calling on the FIOS line, the POTS line is incoming & local only.

You have a disaster, and two or three hours later you don't have phones anymore. And Cellular is going to be either down without power, or hopelessly overloaded - right when you need it the most. It could go the other way and FIOS is the one that still works, but that's not the way to bet.

Just like every Telco Central Office has an Emergency Phone fed from a totally seperate nearby Central Office - if the apocryphal "fecal matter impacts the rotary air motivator" and the CO turns into a $5M paperweight, and it does happen...

They've still got working Dial Tone to call in the cavalry - and tell them what to bring.

In the case I got to witness first-hand, they got told to bring lots and lots and lots of spare fuses - Grab 'em all, we'll pick out what we need. I think Steven L. was still around when Art U. "leveled the busbars" at Sylmar.

-->--

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HAncock4 wrote in news:26705c03-9f59- snipped-for-privacy@c19g2000vbb.googlegroups.com:

I'd like to add that the FIOS UPS does not keep up the internet side of the conversation. It only works for maintaining the phone connection. Any intermittant outages (brownouts) will reset the internet router.

For that reason I plugged my FIOS UPS into the computer room UPS. A small

300W would go a long way, but I have a rack mount UPS that keeps several servers up as well.

I've also not had any problem with my legacy phones and the FIOS Phone.

David

This is good advice, but there are some provisos that are worth mentioning.

First thing to consider is the fiber drop cable itself. Most OSP cables are *not* intended to be installed indoors, because of flammability, horizontal/vertical flame spread potential, and toxicity of the smoke when burned. I believe that the NEC at one time did permit a certain maximum amount of drop cable to extend within the building - consult the latest revision for details. Some drop cable is rated for indoor/outdoor use, but I doubt that the V. installer will have any idea whether their drop cable is or not.

Second, grounding is an issue. Nobody believes this, but the FiOS ONT is intended [read: Required] to be properly bonded to the same ground as the electrical service entrance of the building. There are reasons for this - such as the fact that all the coax cable in the building is ultimately terminated to the ONT. The outer braid of the coax wants to be grounded for safety reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread. Also, some fiber drop cable has an embedded metallic strand for strength. This strand is absolutely required to be bonded per the NEC.

In order to properly bond the ONT to the electrical service entrance ground, it should be located in close enough proximity to allow for a short, straight run of the bonding conductor.

There seems to be a lot less emphasis these days on code compliance and such where Telecom is concerned, but I am willing to be a lone voice in the wilderness.

Sorry for dredging up a thread that is more than a week old...

Jim Bennett ================================================== Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.