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Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
It's the cost more than the technology to be honest.
BT's FTTC has batteries in each cabinet to cope with brief outages, VM can do much the same with their nodes and with any eMTA.
Still costs a few quid nonetheless, but hopefully offset by not having to pay BT Wholesale for PSTN.
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Indeed, as I say we're quite capable of it, we just need the political or commercial will to actually spend money on doing it.
I did see a few people come by to take the batteries out of the mobile mast we have on our roof the other day, boy that was a huge pile of batteries, around two pallets worth - and I have no clue how often they have to do that.
---------- Post added at 11:11 ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 ----------
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Originally Posted by Kushan
That's precisely it, the cost. I believe that OFCOM come down hard if telephony services aren't kept up and fixed promptly. Particularly as there's a human life factor, quite a lot of people (elderly and disabled) rely on the phone line for lifeline serivces so a downed line could literally be the death of someone.
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And yet, there's stories even on this very forum of people with medical equipment hooked up having faulty fixed-lines that took VM weeks or months to deal with.
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The problem with a VoIP service is the battery backup would have to extend into the customer's property and keep their hub alive as well. I don't know if there's technology to do that.
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The BT/Openreach FTTC modem already has a built-in plug for battery backup modules, most enterprise servers are equipped with battery backups on critical PCI(e) cards in addition to the grid itself - and I've run personal battery backups on telecoms equipment using just bog-standard consumer batteries and UPSes. The technology is all there - and even widespread - it's really no different to just shoving a phone battery onto the back of your modem. However 4 million+ phone batteries is going to be a bigger job to maintain than 4000 exchange backups...
There's also power-down-the-line technology (powering the connection through the broadband line itself, just like phones) but AFAIK that's not widely used.
---------- Post added at 11:17 ---------- Previous post was at 11:11 ----------
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Originally Posted by Pierre
VM's Voice over Cable project is in the works, but is still very much in its infancy - it's got a name and that's about it at the moment.
VM will have to decommission the telephony network as it's just too old. Running on System X's 20odd years old, and other equally old kit.
But it's a cash cow for VM, it's paid for itself many times over and still brings in millions each year.
Voice over cable, or some other solution, will happen but I think VM will continue to eek out every last penny from the existing voice network until it expires.
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Wouldn't replacing it with newer/cheaper to maintain equipment and charging the same amount be an even bigger cash cow?