Emergency back-up phone not working

[Mike_L]

Good morning.

A Virgin engineer recently called to connect our landline to our router.This is working OK.

He explained that, as our calls now go via the router, we won't be able to make or receive calls if there is a power cut or if the broadband service goes down. To deal with that, he left us a special emergency phone (a Morotorola FW500) that contains a SIM card. He said the SIM card is tied to our normal landline number, and will allow us to make or receive calls as usual if the need arises.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work. The phone itself seems to be OK. I can use it to make and receive calls as normal when it is plugged into the phone socket. But in order to test the SIM card, I disconnected it from the phone socket and tried to make a call. I received a voice message saying that I did not have enough credit to make the call. I don't understand why I need credit or how to obtain it. Also, the phone couldn't receive incoming calls.

I have checked that the phone is fully charged, that the ringer is switched on, and that the aerial is fully extended. The icon for connection status shows a  signal (albeit a weak one). I have tried removing and re-inserting the SIM card, without success.

I would be grateful for any help you can give me with this.

Mike

[Travis_M]

Hi @Mike_L 

Thanks for posting on our community forum and sorry to hear about the issue with the landline

The emergency line would only kick in if the hub is down, I'd suggest rather than unplugging the phone socket - you unplug the hub power cable as this would resemble an outage in effect. Please keep us updated

Regards

[Mike_L]

Travis_M, thanks for your prompt reply. I will try as you suggest, and report back. (I might have to wait until later this evening as other people in the house are using the broadband connection at present.)

Mike

[Travis_M]

Hi @Mike_L 

Thanks for your response

Absolutely no worries, please do be sure to keep us updated on this 🙂

Regards

[jem101 · Accepted solution]

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@Mike_L wrote:

Travis_M, thanks for your prompt reply. I will try as you suggest, and report back. (I might have to wait until later this evening as other people in the house are using the broadband connection at present.)

Mike

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Mike

I believe that the emergency backup line can only be used to call the emergency services, it has a SIM card with no credit on it (not sure if you can even 'top it up' yourself in any way), but that's OK as calling 999 doesn't require it. What you can't do is call other numbers

As for it being 'tied to your normal landline number', I'm afraid that's just completely incorrect.

[Mike_L]

Jem101,

It looks like you are completely correct. Thanks for your reply.

I also found this in the help pages on the Virgin site:

"If you have accessibility needs or don't have a mobile phone, we’ll give you an Emergency Backup Line at no extra cost. With this, you’ll be able to call 999/112 emergency services during a power cut or network outage."

which confirms what you said.

This is in complete contradiction to what the engineer told me. He said that we would be able to use the backup phone "just like our normal phone", including people using our normal number to phone us.

Not to worry. With luck, we'll never need to dial 999 during a power cut.

Mike