Apart from the very cheapest monthly SIMs, unlimited call and texts seems to be standard - it's the data limit that goes up as the price goes up - my Lebara £4.90/month gives me 5GB download and unlimited calls/texts - 5GB is more than adequate as most of my internet use is on the PC, not the phone.
We are paying £18 per month for unlimited data and unlimited texts and voice. We are with Three.
A couple of years back Ofcom mandated that communication providers like BT should supply Battery Backup Units for vulnerable groups who would have no alternative means of communication in the event of a power cut.
BT actually said they would do this and as soon as we switched over to fibre I pestered BT for the BBUs (UPS if you like).
It took considerable persuasion but I got them and due to BT's incompetence I actually got 5. So three spares.
Subsequently communication providers realised that this was going to cost a lot of money and reference to BBUs when ordering fibre disappeared. Much negotiation has since taken place with Ofcom about this and I'm not sure what the latest outcome is. However, I've seen buried in the small print of ISPs selling fibre that it won't work in the event of a power cut and you'd need to do something about it. No mention of them supplying BBUs.
The talk was that the BBUs would only need to last 3 hours I think.
If you're on Fibre to home (FTTP) you need to keep the Router/Modem and the Optical Network Terminator (ONT) alive. Typically on ours they both need the same supply voltages but have different connectors.
If you're on Fibre To Cabinet (FTTC) you'll only have a Router/Modem and will only need to keep that alive.
2g isnt being switched off yet but 3g is already being phased out.
Making most of our out going calls to the US, Australia, New Zealand & France, we have long been on VoIP with the German provider "Sipgate", these come at about 2 p per minute. Thankfully, that's a rate I don't too distressed at the hour or more long calls, one of us make. South Africa, not called too frequently is 5p/minute.
With its digital technology the clarity is exceptionally good, something our landline frequently is not.
LINK
On the point of "junking" the common DECT equipment many of us will have when going VoIP, far from necessarily, we use DECT phone on our VoIP.
With its digital technology the clarity is exceptionally good, something our landline frequently is not.
LINK
On the point of "junking" the common DECT equipment many of us will have when going VoIP, far from necessarily, we use DECT phone on our VoIP.
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DECT to VOIP adapters (Analogue telephone adapters) aren’t very expensive, I have seen some starting at £20 and upwards. So you can continue to use the DECT landline phones when moved to VoIP. Some ISP supply them.
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Apologies for bringing this up again. Surely if there is a power failure in the area even if you have a UPS, will the fibre connection be operational as surely it also requires power to operate?
Your EV will power the system as well as your neighbours too. The future is on its way. 😂😂😂
Though an assumption, I would think broadband providers would have made power back up provisions for their side?
It's a good question and the answer is yes and no 😉
There are currently two schemes for fibre broadband. One is called Fibre to Cabinet...FTTC. In this network the Fibre runs to a cabinet somewhere in the area near your home. From the cabinet the optical signal gets converted to an electrical signal and goes down copper wire to the home. This system requires power in the cabinet and the cabinets usually have some form of battery backup to cope with power outages. But for how long they'll run I don't know.
The other system is Fibre To Premises...FTTP. In this system it's an optical signal from the exchange to your home. The exchanges will have large power backup systems so the system should keep running. It would be a major problem if an exchange went off line.
One thing I'm not certain of yet is how long the fibre run can be from the exchange to the home. At some point there may need to be a repeater installed to regenerate the optical signal. This will require power from somewhere.
So far here after numerous power cuts our UPS/BBUs have kept us running so the exchange has never shut down.
That’s lost on me 🤣Do you mean that heap of junk sitting across the road rotting away?
Our exchange is about 2 miles from our residence. We have fibre to a cabinet nearby and then i guess copper to the home.
We have a repeater node opposite our house. We are going Full Fiber and the new cable will run from the node under the road and our garden in the existing telephone wire trunk. There’s also a supply cabinet at the top of the road which was installed when new fibre was installed to our close. Around the area are larger cabinets with warnings of voltage risk. So I guess the system is powered locally too.
BTs UPS is stated to give one hour backup.
When we have power cuts they seem to last a lot longer than one hour. Granted the power cuts are not all that often.
I have BTs BBUs and they've lasted over 3 hours in power cuts so far. If the outage seems its going to be longer I'd disconnect the equipment they power and only reconnect them in an emergency.
Seems strange fibre optics needs "boosters" as such, based on light managing to travel from distant stars into millions of light years away; so the odd couple of miles from the exchange ought not be a challenge?
Signal handling and managing devices, yes, boosting more difficult to understand, at least for me.
Signal handling and managing devices, yes, boosting more difficult to understand, at least for me.
The intensity of the starlight diminishes the further away you get - known as the Inverse Sqaure Law. So the same with sending light down a fibre - the further you send it the lower the signal at the receiving end. But the signal quality also degrades due to other factors.
Depending on various factors 100s of Km are acheivable without repeaters but I have no idea how Openreach do things for example.
Another power break and it seems this one will for 6 hours and hopefully come back on at 5pm. Camping stove is out and old analogue telephone plugged in. However extremely difficult to do Sunday roast on a single hob. Can't even pop down to local pub for meal as now power there either.
A little clarification here.
The new full fibre systems are essentially passive once they leave the data centre (i.e. was exchange) until they arrive at your property. The fibres have passive optical splitting/combining so no power is needed en route. The street cabs are replaced by a 'pop-up' fibre branching system which are in duct pits or on the top of telegraph poles.
Forget about exchanges. BT currently have around 5600 of them but when fibre is complete there will less than 1000. Your local connection point will likely no longer be something that looks like a house with very few windows a few streets away: after all of the fibre combining your system connection location (as was exchange) may be 150-200km away!
Worry ye not about paddy digging up the road and your fibre - networks automatically reroute in a tiny fraction of a second if the 'normal' route fails. To put it in perspective, your VoIP connection will likely be either 32kb/s or 64kb/s, but the fibre that it aggregates into may well be running at 10Gb/s - or in round figures there could potentially be over 150,000 simultaneous calls on one fibre!
In terms of mains failure support, at your property you will have an Optical Network Termination or ONT which reads the data from the fibre and passes it to an Ethernet interface.
The ONT will be on the outside of your property.
at working height, and the Ethernet cable (which is also very small) will pass through the wall into your property and connect to a router.
The router provides low voltage power to the ONT, and has a PSTN socket on it into which you plug your existing phone or DECT base station. To keep your domestic phone system working you will need some form or battery backup, but as such a simple router will probably only pull maybe 15W or so usually at 12V.
Ergo such would pull about 1.5Ah from a backup battery, so 7 days cover would need around 10Ah. Bear in mind that is only for the ONT and router - if under power fail state you replace your DECT system with a good old PSTN plug-in phone the increased power need will not be much as you probably won't be making many calls!
The new full fibre systems are essentially passive once they leave the data centre (i.e. was exchange) until they arrive at your property. The fibres have passive optical splitting/combining so no power is needed en route. The street cabs are replaced by a 'pop-up' fibre branching system which are in duct pits or on the top of telegraph poles.
Forget about exchanges. BT currently have around 5600 of them but when fibre is complete there will less than 1000. Your local connection point will likely no longer be something that looks like a house with very few windows a few streets away: after all of the fibre combining your system connection location (as was exchange) may be 150-200km away!
Worry ye not about paddy digging up the road and your fibre - networks automatically reroute in a tiny fraction of a second if the 'normal' route fails. To put it in perspective, your VoIP connection will likely be either 32kb/s or 64kb/s, but the fibre that it aggregates into may well be running at 10Gb/s - or in round figures there could potentially be over 150,000 simultaneous calls on one fibre!
In terms of mains failure support, at your property you will have an Optical Network Termination or ONT which reads the data from the fibre and passes it to an Ethernet interface.
The ONT will be on the outside of your property.
at working height, and the Ethernet cable (which is also very small) will pass through the wall into your property and connect to a router.
The router provides low voltage power to the ONT, and has a PSTN socket on it into which you plug your existing phone or DECT base station. To keep your domestic phone system working you will need some form or battery backup, but as such a simple router will probably only pull maybe 15W or so usually at 12V.
Ergo such would pull about 1.5Ah from a backup battery, so 7 days cover would need around 10Ah. Bear in mind that is only for the ONT and router - if under power fail state you replace your DECT system with a good old PSTN plug-in phone the increased power need will not be much as you probably won't be making many calls!
I am sorry Woodentop, but find it difficult to read your posts. It would be far better if you used paragraphs.
A rather long post just to address what happens in a power failure. But your last four lines puzzle me. Are you saying that if you still have the PSTN phone it will still work in the event of a power outage? Presumably powered by the BBS?
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