Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

[Chris Adams <cmadams () hiwaay net>]

Once upon a time, Daniel Senie <dts () senie com> said:
> Before you get too hung up on the emergency phone thing, take a hard  
> look at the present day. The telcos pushed SLC gear out everywhere.  
> Those have batteries, but at least in some areas, no maintenance was  
> done, batteries died, and when the power went out, so did the phones.  
> The SLCs had generator plug-in setups to be used in an emergency, but  
> in any natural disaster, it's unlikely there'd be enough portables  
> deployed and maintained by the telco to keep the multiplexors alive.  

Around here, most BellSouth cabinets have a natural gas generator as
part of the setup, so they stay up as long as the gas lines are good
(and if something has happened to both the power lines and the gas
service, it probably doesn't matter much anyway).

We had a fairly large power outage here a few months ago that affected
just about everybody except for my house and my sister's house (we're
only a mile or so apart).  Neither of us even knew the power was out
until we left our houses.  Her Comcast cable was out (my Knology
wasn't), so she decided to go to the store (I just happened to also go
out at the same time).

Sticking with BellSouth/AT&T for phone service (and DSL for Internet)
wasn't such a bad idea after all.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams () hiwaay net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.