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Network goes down during power cuts despite (local) battery backup

Tony_Jef
Established Contributor
Established Contributor

We have full fibre broadband and a Digital Voice landline courtesy of EE, and have installed suitable UPS battery backup units to power essential equipment in the house (the fibre terminal, the EE router, the Digital Home Phone handset...etc.), with the reasonable expectation that even if there is a local power cut we will still be able to use our home phone and broadband. However, after experiencing 3 power cuts now since we had the installation (the most recent a couple of days ago), it is very clear that while our in-house equipment is suitably power-cut proof, the same can not be said of the external fibre network supplying us with broadband service, because in all 3 cuts the broadband instantly went down. I am led to believe that the Openreach network "should" be resilient against power cuts, but this is absolutely not the case with our infrastructure in this location. We're on the Isle of Mull and the fibre network was installed at the back end of last year, so should be up to current spec.

Happily, power cuts here, while fairly frequent, are usually fairly short, but one of the 3 mentioned here lasted 2 days.

The battery backup solutions sold by EE are marketed as a means of maintaining contact for vulnerable people; clearly, if the network itself is failing as soon as the power goes off, this isn't doing what it says on the tin.

21 REPLIES 21

@Tony_Jef Pretty much confirms that there is no total protection BBU end to end and keeping the Fibre up and working!

Tony_Jef
Established Contributor
Established Contributor

@JimM11 definitely looks that way!