[Boatanchors] POTS vs. Other Services (Was: Short Wave Broadcast Folks)

[Frederick Bray]

A couple things to keep in mind.

Although POTS is regarded by some as a "boatanchor service", it has 
several advantages.  With POTS, the telco provides the battery and 
ringing voltages from the central office, backed up by large battery 
banks and usually also generators.  Not all cell sites have that degree 
of backup power.   Absent physical damage to the line, you have a 
dedicated copper pair running from your house to the central office.  
While in an emergency, you may have delayed dial tone, you tend not to 
have the overload that can take place at a single cell tower.  Also, 
with POTS the number is tied to a physical address, providing a better 
location to 911 in an emergency.

With cable or FIOS, as others have mentioned, YOU effectively have to 
provide the backup power for your home phones and other related 
devices.  In some areas, the cable company or FIOS provider does supply 
an initial battery.  However, replacement of it is usually your 
responsibility.  Of course most of the people on this list would 
probably know to install a much higher capacity battery than is supplied 
and to periodically test and replace it.  The average person might not 
know that there is a battery -- let alone how to replace it or to 
install a larger one -- and also might not even realize that the 
original battery required periodic replacement. Also, to minimize 
battery capacity, the FIOS providers often don't provide backup for the 
TV or Internet side of the interface.  This means that if you are lucky 
enough have a good battery, during a power outage you may have phone 
service for a time but none of the other services you are paying for 
will work.  Again, people on this list could easily figure out the 
work-around but many folks can't.

I do not have either FIOS or cable company provided telephone service, 
but I do have cable TV.  During a recent planned power outage that ended 
up lasting more than 12 hours, I made an interesting discovery.  
Although I have backup AC power, after several hours I noticed that the 
incoming cable TV signal had died. In my area, the cable company has a 
lot of fiber but the "last mile" is still coax.  This requires equipment 
to transition from fiber to copper and this equipment is powered off the 
grid.  I could only surmise that the transitional equipment had 
exhausted whatever backup batteries it had.  If I had telephone service 
from the cable company, that would have disappeared even with adequate 
backup power on my end.

As others have previously observed, the cell network, cable TV, and FIOS 
is intended to provide normal service under normal conditions and those 
industries make few promises beyond that.  On the other hand, POTS 
evolved over many decades and due to regulation the telcos had to build 
in resiliency and reliability in emergencies.

Thus, POTS is one boatanchor that I intend to keep as long as possible.

KE6CD