Who do we thank for phones working? (1 Viewer)

[John Watson]

Many times in power failures I've noticed that we can still talk on phones, while we are in the dark, or freezer contents are thawing. Right now many houses in NS are still without power 5 days after Hurricane Juan hit, but at least they can communicate by phone.

Who was responsible for deciding the trickle of power for phones should be carried with the phone line? Was it great foresight, or just dumb luck, or something else?

 

[David Susilo]

I don't know whom to thank, but I think it's a foresight (although not THAT great) after the recent blackout where even phonelines are down.

 

[Denward]

In this age of cordless phones, don't forget to always have one corded phone plugged in as a backup in case electricity goes out. We use cordless for 99% of our conversations, but I have a corded phone on the wall of my kitchen and bathroom.

 

[SteveA]

Many people here in Virginia lost phone service went hurricane Isabel came through a couple weeks ago. As it stands, just about everyone has power back on, but some people were told by the phone company that it will be November before their service can be restored. I'd hardly call that reliable service.

 

[Mark Murphy]

If there is no commercial power to the telco's Central Office, they run off generators and worse case, batteries. As long as they keep the generators fueled, you won't lose regular phone service to a power outage. PBX, ISDN or any other phones that use ac power(cordless too) are a different story. As far as the Virginia issue, the outside cables were probably damaged by the hurricane. I am a Central Office Tech, so I'm not so well informed about the outside stuff.

 

[Mark Shannon]

During the North East US and Canada blackout back in August, I relized what use the power is to us. All of the phones in my house are cordless, so, we didn't have any phones working for the first night. Not even my cell phone worked, as I believe the relay station (one of those big antennas off of the highway, heh) relied on power from the grid. So, we rummaged through our house for some corded phones, and we managed to find two. Not that I had anyone to call, anyways...

 

[Lance Nichols]

During the big power outage, I had land line usage, and at work, had Internet access. This means most of the major telecoms lines were up and running.

I was lucky, or at least my wife was lucky (I had to pull a 19 hr shift that day). We had power back by 3AM, thanks to us being on the same grid section as a local hospital.

I have been looking at "off the grid" solutions since then.

IIRC, Phone use little actual power. Ring voltage is 100V, but the amperage is low, and I think that the carrier voltage is 24v. Likely, each switching station has it's own UPS and generator that powers the local switch and it fabric of connections.

 

[John Watson]

The fact that the relatively little power needed for the phone comes on the phone lines, and not from the hosehold service, is what has been miraculous for many crises.

The original decision to do it that way may have been made without knowledge of how great a role it would play, but I was just curious how it came about.

 

[Mark Murphy]

48V is all it takes!

 

[Seth--L]

WHAT?!

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Probably because the phone company did not have a plethora of other companies to "borrow" talent from.

When our county in MD was recovering from Isabelle, there were a ton of bucket trucks from NC plowing the roads. Heard the local utilities got help from as far away as Texas and Nebraska. Sure it wasn't cheap, but folks still b-tch that power was out a week. 90% of our county was without power and they got us back up within 5 days. Pretty amazing.

I don't think the local phone company has that talent pool to draw from.

 

[Seth--L]

Still, a month? What are they doing, rebuilding the entire phone grid from ground up?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

The original decision to do it that way may have been made without knowledge of how great a role it would play, but I was just curious how it came about.

Asking how this came about is like asking how someone decided that foods preserved with salt would have a salty flavor.

Just as using salt as a preservative automatically imparts a salty flavor to food, even though the flavoring is not the point of the exercise, so phone lines have to carry an electrical charge (just as speaker wires do) in order to transmit signals - that is, in order to do their primary job. That this means they can continue working during a failure of the electrical distribution grid is just a by-product of an inherent quality of the telephone. (That they actually do work is a function of a deliberate decision - to make the phone system independent of the electrical grid. But that's as much a matter of one utility not wanting to be too dependent on another as anything else. Not to mention the fact that working phones make it a heck of a lot easier to get the power turned back on. )

I always encourage businesses to install at least one independent single line analog wall jack, preferably with a fax machine with a handset attached to it, for precisely this kind of problem. An extended blackout will drain the batteries that (should be) keeping the phone switch running, and once they go all the jacks that run off the switch (including the single-line analog ones used for faxes that are extension off the system) will go dead. I've seen too many offices that run everything through the switch and people are astonished when they lose the phones when they lose the lights.

(Some people are so used to their home phones working through a blackout that they never consider that their office phones might behave differently I used to work in the service call center for an office PBX manufacturer and can't tell you how many times people called on fax phones, cell phones or pay phones to report their office systems dead - without mentioning that their power was also off. )

Regards,

Joe

 

[John Watson]

Joseph, that's the answer I guess. I'm no electrical engineer so it hadn't occurred to me that it is inherent.

I thought it might have had something to do with some rivalry between Bell and Edison.

Dam shame the cable company can't give enuff juice down their lines to power my TV when the electrical service is off!

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Reminds me of the tech support horror story where someone is troubleshooting a PC that won't power up. After the usual inquiries (is the PC hooked to the monitor, is the power cord plugged in, etc), the end user states she can't do any more PC troubleshooting because her office is too dark (they lost power over an hour ago...). The tech told her to pack up the PC and send it back because she was too stupid to work on a computer. Tech support got fired.

Not sure if that story's an urban legend or not.

As for the complete phone recovery for taking a month plus, that is feasible. The phone company probably did need to rebuild a good portion of their grid and to mobilize that force would take some time. They probably keep only a minimal repair staff on hand to keep daily costs down. Considering the rural areas of NC, VA, etc, those people will not be first on the "hit list" of repairs.

Interesting side note on Cell phones, most towers do have backup generators and batteries. However, I'm not sure whose responsibility it is to refuel the generators during an extended outage, probably the owner of the tower since multiple cell phone carriers can share a single pole.

 

[Philip_G]

Reminds me of the tech support horror story where someone is troubleshooting a PC that won't power up. After the usual inquiries (is the PC hooked to the monitor, is the power cord plugged in, etc), the end user states she can't do any more PC troubleshooting because her office is too dark (they lost power over an hour ago...). The tech told her to pack up the PC and send it back because she was too stupid to work on a computer. Tech support got fired.

I've worked in support jobs where I've had to ask users "does your store have lights on?" as a troubleshooting step. There are people this stupid out there (and yes the answer has been no...)

Joseph beat me to the answer. Likely the telco has a diesel/natural gas/propane generator on standby that can run the switch.

 

[Mark Murphy]

I don't about VA, but up here in New England, if there is a major storm that creates major phone service issues, all available technicians are sent to the area that needs repair. I don't know the extent of the damage there, but if a large number of poles and cables were damaged (nevermind the droplines going to each individual home) then it will take some time to get them back up. I'm sure there are techs from other areas helping out, but it can be a slow process.

 

[Mark Murphy]

I thought it might have had something to do with some rivalry between Bell and Edison.

I doubt there is a rivalry, but there are times when one company owns the pole and the other one has to wait til its repaired by the owner to do the work. If there are any electric issues at a pole, the phone company won't repair its facilities til the power company repairs the electrical problem. This could slow down the process as well.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

As it stands, just about everyone has power back on, but some people were told by the phone company that it will be November before their service can be restored. I'd hardly call that reliable service.

That depends on where these folks are. Small numbers of people in remote areas are (a) more vulnerable to losing service because of a single point of failure (on microwave relay tower, overhead wire connection or underground junction goes and you're cut off) and (b) likely to wait longer for a repair because the phone company is going to go for the biggest bang for its repair buck - fixing those things that will get the largest numbers of subcribers working again in the shortest amount of time. I can easily see it taking as much as three months to get to smaller pockets of people where there are either miles of wire to restring or where major equipment (like a replacement microwave transmitter) has to be special ordered and then hauled into the middle of nowhere and placed on a tower.

Regards,

Joe