OT: phone/wireless service during power outage?

[newcomer]

Did you have your phone/wireless coverage during the power outage last evening/night?

I lost my home phone service as soon as the main power was gone since I have been using VOIP.

But surprisingly, my wireless phones (Sprint family plan) have had full service all of the time last evening/night, while I have been thinking about switching to other providers…

[AK]

U-Verse VOIP phone service worked fine with AT&T-supplied backup battery.

TMobile voice and data worked in most areas.

[briansd1]

My AT&T phone worked the whole time.

But I lost data on the phone later in the night.

[earlyretirement]

Nope, I use TMobile and it barely worked. I would be able to dial out and then it would quit. I have Blackberry service on it as well and even that wasn’t working so I couldn’t send emails. Occasionally I’d get an email or 2 come in but I couldn’t respond to them.

I woke up with hundreds of emails……

[afx114]

AT&T is always shit in my neighborhood, so I have a MicroCell. But of course that went down with the power, so I was fucked. I have an old corded phone in my closet specifically for the zombie apocalypse… it worked fine.

[UCGal]

Cordless phones for the land line obviously didn’t work. Nor did the answering machine. But the hardwired land line extensions worked.

Cell coverage (Verizon) was less than wonderful in the late afternoon. I assume because everyone was calling everyone else to say they were stuck in traffic. (Spent 2 hours going from sorrento valley to UC yesterday!!!) Cell coverage was fine in the evening.

Internet was obviously down. I have a cable modem through time Warner.

[sdrealtor]

hardwired land line worked as did verizon cell phone

[jpinpb]

ATT worked on our i-Pad, but very slow. Went down a couple of times, then worked again. Texting was not a problem at all on my cell and my DH w/T-Mo. Made a few phone calls and had a few phone calls, as well. No problems.

[sdduuuude]

Our hardwired land line phone was able to call out to cell phones, but we were unable to call into our own landline.

[svelte]

We have no landline.

But Sprint cell worked flawlessly.

[bearishgurl]

AT&T service on unlocked non-smart phone worked until about 5:45 p.m. yesterday, then displayed “No Network Coverage” until this morning. Running on GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Was able to get messages off of it and make calls this morning but it initially displayed the wrong time (abt 2 hrs later). I shut it off and back on and it is now displaying the correct time. (Texting/internet was turned off with the carrier abt 3 years ago.)

Kid w/new AT&T Windows smartphone lost all services about 5:30 pm and did not get it back until this morning.

Landline went out right away and was working again by about 8:45 pm.

Internet was hard-wired to wireless router w/no battery backup so no service.

Walked dog at 7:30 pm and noticed 8 generators in use on block and one homeowner taking up residence in their RV.

Neighbors tell me this morning we rec’d our service back after 3:00 a.m. Friends in East county state they rec’d their service back just before 2:00 a.m.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=jpinpb]ATT worked on our i-Pad, but very slow. Went down a couple of times, then worked again. Texting was not a problem at all on my cell and my DH w/T-Mo. Made a few phone calls and had a few phone calls, as well. No problems.[/quote]

I have AT&T on my Ipad but it was so slow even emails weren’t coming through or I couldn’t send. Occasionally it would download some newspaper subscriptions I have like USA Today and Wall Street Journal but it wasn’t working at all flatlined signal until about 9 PM.

[moneymaker]

With Cox I was getting my usual 22MHz download speed but upload jumped up to 9MHz(usually in the 4-5MHz range), never seen it so fast. I have the prefered speed, landline phone worked just fine. Never tried the TV. Just glad we didn’t have to throw any food out as we have frig and garage freezer full.

[CDMA ENG]

So there are a couple of things that are good to know.

One.

Land Line systems have thier own power supply. The system is on a large battery bank and the generators are required, by FCC mandate, to have several days worth of fuel to support.

Two.

Most cell sites, now, have six hours of battery back up but sometime this won’t go six hours due to extremly large loads at the cell.

Three.

Here is the stupid part. Some cell sites have fiber to them instead of T1s. While the FCC mandated that the cell sites has 6 hours of battery back up the fiber converter that translate DS0s only has two hours. So the site could keep going except its backhaul has dropped off. Mean while… Like I said earlier cell sites that are connected via T1s should remain up for the duration of the cell sites batteries.

Four.

VOIP systems will fail because you do not have a local power supply. IDCs will have power, the same way that local land line switchs do, and the connection is still there but the local reciever (modem) will not have power.

Five.

Diaster Recovery. All carriers have a diaster recovery plan. It covers all highways, police, fire, and other first responders, including hospitals. Those sites will be restored first and sometimes maintianed by generator if possible. If you live under a site that is low traffic and low priority it could be sometime before you service is restored.

Lastly, If you have to communicate to your love ones that you are ok it is best to try to send a text rather than a voice call. In a text format some handset will retry continually to get the message out. Once that message is out… It will be on the local switch SMS… Where it will be queued to get out. So long after the cell site fails, due to power, the message will still get out because the SMS at the switch will still be on an active system. It may get out hours later due to congestions but better late than never.

Just another PSA…

CE

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