Quote:
Originally Posted by Kushan
The problem is those emergency support systems, like what elderly and disabled people have. You know, the panic button or the "I've fallen over and can't get up and/or might be dying" devices. They rely on the phone line. That's the reason the phone line is treated as critical infrastructure.
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Well the elderly and disabled people who need panic buttons and such devices probably aren't the target market for superfast pure-fibre broadband... BT still have a universal service obligation to provide copper whether or not VM also roll out FTTP in any given area.
---------- Post added at 14:29 ---------- Previous post was at 14:23 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhyds
At the start of this year my area was hit a *very* large storm (Red Met Office warning and bits of people's houses flying off). We lost *all* mobile phone networks within an hour of the storm starting and they were off for at least a day, and they didn't come back all at once, so some networks were off for even longer. The landline phone network didn't have any downtime (except lines physically downed by a falling trees etc). The local exchange UPS kept everything going with no issues. The real issue was with some homeowners who couldn't make or receive any calls because their home electricity supply was off and they only had cordless phones (our local electricity network operator was handing out pound shop corded phones to anyone who needed one). The fact is that mobile phone networks simply aren't designed with the same resilience as even a domestic phone line. Its very, very rare you'll get a "network busy" or "no free lines" type fault on a landline, but its easily done with mobiles.
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Sounds like a pretty poorly run area. Mobile can be inherently more reliable than fixed-line copper for a number of reasons, particularly if a mast is fed with underground fibre. On the other hand if an area is remote and accessible only via microwave relays, then it tends to be a lot worse when the weather comes in.
It's rare to get 'Network busy' on a fixed line a) because hardly anyone uses them anybore and b) because they're still running off archaic circuit-switched systems. Plus you don't get 100,000+ people all taking their landlines into the city centre at once at the weekends when they go shopping thus shifting an entire city's worth of load into one tiny area.
Nonetheless mobile can frequently be more resilient than fixed-line. Not always, certainly not with consumer networks, but the 'real' industrial TETRA and GSM-R networks are rock solid. Furthermore if mobile was inherently unreliable, the government wouldn't be seeking to replace the emergency services' dedicated network with rented capacity on public LTE services in future.