[BC] POTS reliability...

[Broadcast List USER]

I was the DOE for a chain (back in the one station per market days)  
that lost power for nearly one month.

The power company thought in important we stay on the air.  We were  
offering good information.  They actually offered to deliver diesel  
fuel to the transmitter site.

We were able to keep in on the air on our own.

We were on generator almost for a month because of ice storms.  The  
odd thing was that even with Road Tax, it cost less than 1/3 the cost  
of the electric bill.  We paid road tax because of the situation, we  
just wanted to be on the air, so we bought diesel, and paid the road  
tax.

Phone service never went out.

BUT copper is the way to go.

I have one copper pair into my house, and five VoIP lines.

I will ENEVER get rid of the one POTS line.

POTS is just more reliable than anything else.

--chip

On Apr 24, 2010, at 9:00 AM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

> Message: 3
> From: Craig Bowman <craig1 at shianet.org>
>
> During the east cost blackout several years ago many radio and
> television stations found their phone service interrupted once the  
> phone
> companies ups powering the fiber died.  Stations which still had  
> copper
> lines to the CO ( I insist on that for request / hot lines and at  
> least
> one fax machine) were the only dial tone in the building.  One (at
> least) emergency management center found themselves without phone  
> lines
> for this same reason only hours into the crisis.  That outage was a
> wake-up call for most of us involved.  Having running water (spigot  
> and
> hose) close to your generator to replenish the coolant after a hose
> rupture is another lesson which comes to mind.  Running an emergency
> generator for a couple days is a real stress test.
>
> Craig Bowman
> Bowman Engineering
> 989-277-8835