It's somehow fitting that I find myself this week in a hotel in Berkeley, California...and missing the charger for my cell phone. While I've been tasked with a project here in the Golden State said device seems to prefer taking…
When conversation turns to a debate of VoIP vs POTS one of the common arguments in favor of keeping at least one POTS line is the idea that a plain vanilla phone doesn’t require AC power. It’s power comes down that very same POTS line from the phone company, so in theory it remains operational in the case of a power outage. This is fast on the way to becoming a myth.
The idea itself is not wrong. You could have a very plain phone on your POTS line, and it would work during a power outage. However, the simple fact is that at least in the US…almost noone has a simple line powered phone anymore.
Earlier this evening Leo Laporte of TWiT fame tweeted the following:
Power is out in Petaluma. TWiT Live is down until it returns but no ETA. Thank goodness for the iPad 3G. http://j.mp/dt8Oii
I must admit that I am surprised and a little shocked that such an incident would take TWiT Cottage off-line. Leo Laporte is unusual amongst the online media community. His TWiT related endeavors are an unparalleled success. His transformation from traditional to online media is the stuff of future textbooks.
An enterprise such as TWiT should not be taken down by something so simple as a power outage when standby generators are sold at every Lowe’s and Home Depot across the country.
It started out an uneventful day, the third day in an entire week that I expected to spend in my home office. That’s something of a rarity in recent times. I was enjoying it, catching up on matters around here, and addressing tech support calls as they arose. I was on just such a call when, to my considerable surprise, the power went out.
The sudden loss of power is not enough to disrupt my phone call beyond my own expression of surprise. As I’ve documented elsewhere, I’ve taken steps to ensure that critical infrastructure around here is on a UPS. To paraphrase Frank Herbert, “The electrons must flow.” In fact, it occurred to me that this afternoon was an opportune time to ascertain just how sound my planning had been.
There was a recent thread over on the very busy Asterisk Users Mailing List where someone asked for recommendations with respect to network switches that provide power-over-ethernet. There were a number of good replies. One especially caught my attention. Jim…
Over at www.broadbandreports.com a VOIP forum member has noted an interesting problem. When he suffered a power outage he also lost his cable modem service. This despite the fact that he dutifully provided a UPS solution to keep his network gear running. We can infer that the CableCo doesn’t provide similar UPS capability in the local cabinets serving his area.
This is in stark contrast to Telco’s, who historically provide continuous service through power outages. They have put huge effort into achieving 99.999% uptime, and continuous power is a major consideration.