Question for broadband engineers

andythelandy · 13 Jan 2021 at 14:48

So just had a power cut which proves problematic when working from home because I have no phone signal to tether from when the router goes down.

No problem I thought, I got the spare fully charged car battery from the garage connected it up to the sine wave inverter I have and powered up the router, the router works and the WIFI is on however it can't get a connection to the phone line which is disappointing!

I always thought that old copper lines are still live during a powercut but it would appear that they're not as it isn't working at all.

I know the car battery and inverter setup does work with the router as I tried it a few months back as a test, however there was no power cut at the time.

I'm guessing because we have fibre to cabinet type broadband that the power to the cabinet itself is also down meaning that no internet is actually finding it's way down the phone line, are there any broadband engineers on here that can confirm if this is true?

Thanks!

pepp77 · 13 Jan 2021 at 14:50

Yes cabinets are powered, they have a battery for backup, but this is to cover minutes only. The actual phone line should still work, just not the broadband part.

bremen1874 · 13 Jan 2021 at 15:15

Most modern landline phones need their own power to work.

andythelandy said:
because I have no phone signal to tether from when the router goes down

Not sure where tethering comes into this.

andythelandy · 13 Jan 2021 at 15:31

Ah that's very interesting thanks for the info.

With regards to tethering what I meant is that when working from home I am scuppered during a power cut because there is no mobile 4G signal I can use to tether to my work laptop to carry on working.

Caged · 13 Jan 2021 at 15:38

The FTTC cabinet should stay alive for a few hours on battery power, it's possible that the batteries are worn out now and I'm not even sure it would count as a fault.

Avalon · 13 Jan 2021 at 16:35

Caged said:
The FTTC cabinet should stay alive for a few hours on battery power, it's possible that the batteries are worn out now and I'm not even sure it would count as a fault.

Worn out is possible, but they have a nasty habit of being stolen. It’s made the news in the usual places a few times over the years along with cable theft.

chrcoluk · 13 Jan 2021 at 17:25

When a car crashed into my cabinet it severed the power cables, it was on battery power for several days, even when the chairmans office told the local engineer team to keep swapping the batteries they couldnt maintain 24/7 service, the batteries seemed to last about 6-8 hours at a time if I remember right. But I got told for a full cabinet its much shorter nearer 2-3 hours.