16 Jan
2018
16 Jan
'18
1:27 p.m.
On Jan 16, 2018, at 4:19 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 01/16/2018 02:07 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
Sure. That's why I said that a POTS that fails in an hour or so is "poorly
constructed".
Still, any telecom service is going to deal only with limited power failures. Once the
batteries drain, or the generators run out of fuel, *poof*. And any of them rely on quite
complex infrastructure that can, and sometimes will, fall apart. I still remember a small
NH telco which broke 911 service for a full day because their SONET loop wasn't a
loop. They had only bothered to connect one end, so when a squirrel chewed through a
fiber cable the supposedly fault tolerant connection wasn't, and the whole town went
off line.
Which of course also goes out if the power fails,
perhaps not as quickly as a poorly constructed POTS system but it will. Various emergency
sitatuations (hurricanes etc.) have demonstrated this repeatedly.
That surprises me. In Missouri, analog (a.k.a. B1) phone lines are considered "life
saving devices" and have (had?) mandates to be available for service even when the
power is out. This is one of the reasons that TelCo equipment had
such massive battery backups.
I expect that a true analog (B1) phone line should stay in service even without power.
It certainly does, which is why I still use them. Then again, mine is the only house of
about 20 on this one-mile stretch of line that still uses POTS.
paul