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

[Tony_Jef]

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.

[JimM11]

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

[Tony_Jef]

@JimM11 definitely looks that way!

[Tony_Jef]

With Storm Amy about to break, there's a high probability of a power cut here within the coming 48 hours, so it will be interesting to see how things pan out this time. BBUs all fully charged & operational.

[JimM11]

@Tony_Jef Take it that your new BBU's are fully tested, pulled the mains power plugs off and the BBU's keep you up and going while in the normal operation without the Exchange falling over?

[Tony_Jef]

@JimM11 absolutely. What's more, the new units are mains supplied via the UPS units, so belt and braces in place!

[Tony_Jef]

Somewhat mixed experiences during the major power outage we experienced during Storm Amy - power was out for ~70 hours, which was no fun.

For the first ~90 minutes, my fibre broadband/phone service was still fine, and of course my battery backup solutions worked as they should. After that, the BB was up and down like a yo-yo for a few minutes, then died altogether, but with the LOS (loss of signal) light not illuminated (indicates that the local Passive Optical Network was still up & running, but no meaningful signal reaching it from upstream. LOS goes red if the local PON isn't functioning). I think this pretty conclusively points the finger at one or more of the upstream substations failing as the mains power failures worked their way East from us (we are about as far west as you can on the Ross of Mull go & not get your feet wet). So there's at least one substation on the optical network between us and the exchange in Tobermory that has dodgy power backup arrangements that don't operate correctly during a power outage. After that, I switched my local backup power off to conserve battery, and tested occasionally to see if there was a signal; the LOS light was red, indicating that our local PON had also failed by that time.

The one plus was that the EE 4G cellular network stayed up and running for the whole time the power was off; this probably relates to its use to support emergency services, and their power backup arrangements are clearly much superior to Openreach's arrangements on the fibre network. I have a second SIM on O2; the O2 network didn't stay up for long here. Unfortunately, EE mobile coverage isn't 100% by any means, so EE 4G will only be a solution for some.

[JimM11]

@Tony_Jef When the LOS is red, or the PON is flashing Green or Red, the internet is toast so everything is gone your Internet and the Digital Landline phone side, Pon down and the EE Router will go none Aqua more than likely flashing Orange to indicate so, and looking like the Fibre if running a long distance has a BBU somewhere along the line, and the fact that Fibre down then Everything is a complete waste off space no matter what!