Quote Originally Posted by JDNSW View Post
Had a relevant incident today at my son's place. He had a 16yo home alone from school, due to a sports injury. Just after lunch he got a text from her that something terrible had happened and she needed help. Actually, it wasn't terrible, what had happened was a widespread power outage, which she thought she had caused, having a record of tripping the circuit breaker from two many gadgets (including heaters) in her room.

This had the predictable effect of no internet and no phone as the modem was unpowered - FTTN, no backup battery as is standard with FTTP. What was not anticipated, was that the mobile service almost completely failed as well, with only a very flaky SMS available. I assume this is because when the power went out, the first reaction of most people was to phone someone (wife, husband, power company etc), and used their mobile since the fixed line phone did not work, resulting in instant overload of the mobile service.

Wouldn't want to be a real emergency!
Up here the towers often go out with the power. They don't seem to be able to get a reliable UPS hooked up to them. Outages here are not rare. i can't wait