Quote:
Originally Posted by Skie
VM's solution doesn't work for those with landline based fall monitors, alarms etc. They usually have their own battery backup built in, but if the hub is off power it wont work so will need to be updated with a mobile based backup, increasing the costs to councils.
Openreach did a small battery backup unit that can keep the ONT running. But given even that's been discontinued, it looks like providers are just going to shrug as the wording of any rules by Ofcom only mention 999, not ancillary services that may be just as vital.
I'm sure once enough old people fall and die with no assistance due to this boneheadded policy something will change and VM/BT will have to go to the expense of providing some level of care, but until then I guess you just shouldn't fall over in the dark when the powers off?
|
VM's solution is to give those vulnerable customers a battery backup unit for the Hub. You're still looking at a tiny percentage of the population, and even then, these people are only potentially affected if they have a fall at the same time as a power cut.
I've had 2 power cuts in 6 years, each lasting less than 30 mins, and both in the day when it is light. In actual fact this would not be a problem as VM will fit a battery unit, but even if I were having 1 fall a week necessitating such an alarm use, and there were no BBU, the odds of me having such a fall whilst unmonitored are vanishingly small. With a BBU, they are a rounding error.
A fault at the hub site could cause an issue, but it could cause an issue now!
I think I've read the VM solution also has a 4G sim in, so really, your appeal to emotion fallacy (old people will die without phone lines! Down with this sort of thing!) is baseless. The risk is vanishingly small.
Edit: So if a power cut happens once every 3 years, and lasts 30 mins, at any given moment there is a 1 in 52,260 chance of there being a power cut. If you have 1 fall a week that knocks you out and renders you unable to use your mobile, you should probably be in a home, but that's 52 falls a year. So each year, you have a ~1 in 1000 chance of having a fall while there is a power cut. However, the BBU will last 60 mins, so lets say 1 in 100 power cuts are longer than 60 mins. Now you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of falling during an outage (as the BBU has run out) during any given year.