fibre broadband if power goes out over area

Irish Steve

Anyone know if the remote cabinets used for Fibre broadband have battery backup, and if they do, how long is the battery expected to keep the unit alive. It's come up today in discussions related to the storm that's expected to hit most of the country on Monday, no one I know is sure what the story will be if wide areas have no power for prolonged periods after the event.

ED E

The cabinets have a 4-6hr teclo battery that can support them in the instance that the mini pillar next to them loses supply. Only useful if the dwellings themselves retain supply.

ADSL/GPON(FTTH) subs are served by exchange equipment which is often by not always battery backed up. If the exchange loses power it usually means the local substation is OOO so dwellings will be offline anyways.

Skatedude

But if the power goes out, so will your modem/router.

Irish Steve

Thanks, the discussion related to people with inverters, who can power local equipment if their power goes out, and also touched on people who have standby generators that can support other equipment as well. Looks like if a whole area goes out for a prolonged period, that's it for broadband, which raises an interesting issue if the broadband is also providing VOIP, as that would seem to suggest that in the event of a wide area failure, that could also knock out significant numbers of phones as well. The next few days could be interesting!

ED E

Skatedude wrote: »

But if the power goes out, so will your modem/router.

Nope.

We had an ESB outage (1000 homes) the other night just down the road from us. Our estate was live but the Virgin Media cabinet serving us was in the area covered by the outage. Virgin dont have any BBUs........

Irish Steve wrote: »

Thanks, the discussion related to people with inverters, who can power local equipment if their power goes out, and also touched on people who have standby generators that can support other equipment as well. Looks like if a whole area goes out for a prolonged period, that's it for broadband, which raises an interesting issue if the broadband is also providing VOIP, as that would seem to suggest that in the event of a wide area failure, that could also knock out significant numbers of phones as well. The next few days could be interesting!

There are a few options there.

A) Powerwall etc - No interruption until somebody turns on the kettle or shower.
Generator + Inverter = Get yourself back up quickly
C) DC supply BBU:


In the UK OR have trialled them so you've got internet + phone for at least a few hours. In the majority of cases thats enough (ESB often close incidents in under 2hrs).

Skatedude

When we had a powercut recently in dublin, we lost phone coverage as well due to the cell tower masts also losing power, many in the city are spread all over the roofs of buildings.

Irish Steve

That's about what I was expecting, what I wasn't sure of was the duration of the battery in the cabinets, and 6 hours is normally more than enough for the normal outage, it will be the widespread outages for several days if what's being forecast actually happens on Monday. Personally, I'm not going to be worried, but that's due to history, I used to have a computer system in the garage that needed serious power, so there's a 30Kva diesel unit on permanent autostart standby, which means we can run anything without issues. If the cabinet is out, then that's going to mean the mobile will be the only source for internet, hopefully this area won't be too hard hit, though my worry is that the unusual direction could mean failures as a result of pressure on poles etc from a different direction.

ED E

Really the bigger threat is the core network taking a hit. For example a strike on one run near the Dublin Wicklow border takes 90% of Wicklow offline. In urban areas this only happens with JCBs but Ophelia could take our rural core easily enough.

The odds of this impacting you are much higher as its 20,000 subs not 200.