On Fri, 11 Oct 2019, Michael Thomas wrote:
So I knew that telcos are required to battery backup pots, but are isp's too? I have a dinky little provider who also provides pots, but i have never been clear whether dsl stays up too in a blackout.
Of course generalizing all service providers isn't fair... From my experience tracking telecommunication during disasters for the last 20-30 years... Let me generalize (ignoring special goverment priority systems). Generally, during natural (and man-made) disasters: Telecommunication service providers historically failed in this order 1. VSAT/DTH/satellite (during weather events) 2. Cable 3. Cellular/wireless 4. Telco/Wireline 5. Broadcast radio/TV (less than 20% over-the-air stations operating) 6. Network backbone systems (inter-city and toll offices) There are too few WISPs for reliable predictions. I'd guess WISPs reliability is similar to cellular/wireless systems. Restoration order is a bit different. Telecommunications network service historically recovers in this order, assuming customer premise isn't damaged: 1. VSAT/DTH/satellite (after weather clears) 2. Network backbone (inter-city and toll offices) 3. Cellular/wireless (COWs and COLTs deployed) 4. Broadcast radio/TV (20% over-the-air stations operating) 5. Telco/Wireline 5. Cable Cable systems tend to be the first to fail, and the last to be restored. Telco systems tend to fail later, but take a long time to be restored. Network backbones can take a while to repair, but generally nothing else works until they are repaired, so they get repaired first or second. Note: During even the worst catastrophes, there is almost always one or two broadcast radio stations still operating. I set 20% radio/TV stations operating as an arbitrary minimum level. Likewise, COWs and COLTs don't provide full cellular service, but do provide minimumal cell services. In the last 10 years, cellular/wireless system resiliance has been improving while telco/wireline system resiliance has been getting noticablly worse. I assume this a flywheel affect as telco companies have been shifting infrastructure investement to wireless networks and away from wireline networks for the last 20 years.