Virgin Media Community

[kirbyan]

All my home phone and networking gear runs off an APC UPS which gives about an hour's backup. 

I was quite surprised that when we had a recent Power outage although my all my kit remained running, the kit in the street cabinet didn't.  

When the power came back on everything was fine. 

This didn't used to be the case as I recall similar situations when everything on my UPS ran okay and maintained connection to the cabinet despite the power cut. 

Just wondering what VM's policy is on this and if this is just a faulty UPS in the cabinet?

Isn't there some rule about keeping comms infrastructure stuff running to maintain emergency communications? 

Andy 

[DJ_Shadow1966]

Hello

There is no emergency power in the street cabinets I am afraid.

Regards Mike

[Z92]

Well that's odd because my virgin connection remains active during a power cut but my friends connection who lives in the next street down always loses his virgin connection. The only difference is that we are connected to different cabinets. 

Meanwhile our bt connections are always active during a power outage but I know bt have batteries in the cabinets so that's not surprising. 

[cje85]

Openreach cabinets have battery backup (recently a target for thieves) but not VM.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/fake-engineers-steal-batteries-from-openreach-street-c...

[Roger_Gooner]

The distribution cabinets you see on streets are usually not powered. However the MSAN cabinet is powered and the nearby power cabinet has a battery backup for the MSAN.

[EightBall]

The fibre nodes where I live have battery backup, but they do get stolen occasionally.

If the power outage is a long one, I've seen vans plugged into the cabinet itself.

[nodrogd]

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@EightBall wrote:

The fibre nodes where I live have battery backup, but they do get stolen occasionally.

If the power outage is a long one, I've seen vans plugged into the cabinet itself.

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The fibre nodes in HFC areas only have a battery backup for the legacy telephone systems. The HFC system upstream of the node also has no battery backup, so if there is a local power failure at an amp cabinet that is powered, that cabinet & all the ones dependent on it will lose power & hence Broadband & TV. 

[nodrogd]

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@kirbyan wrote:

All my home phone and networking gear runs off an APC UPS which gives about an hour's backup. 

I was quite surprised that when we had a recent Power outage although my all my kit remained running, the kit in the street cabinet didn't.  

When the power came back on everything was fine. 

This didn't used to be the case as I recall similar situations when everything on my UPS ran okay and maintained connection to the cabinet despite the power cut. 

Just wondering what VM's policy is on this and if this is just a faulty UPS in the cabinet?

Isn't there some rule about keeping comms infrastructure stuff running to maintain emergency communications? 

Andy 

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It is quite possible that the network in your area has been resegmented. This allows for more capacity by moving customers onto different nodes. While the fibre nodes usually have batteries, the intermediate powered cabinets (one powered cabinet drives 5 or 6 slave cabinets at 50v through the coax cabling, & there are normally about 25-30 cabinets per fibre node) do not. So if any intermediate cabinet goes down so will any that it drives. I live around 600 metres from my area fibre node, so any power failure in the next estate to me leads to loss of service. VM are under no obligation to maintain Broadband services in a power cut, & indeed OFCOM have removed the rule that new 21CV IP telephone systems have to have backup facilities.

[kirbyan]

All very interesting. Thanks for your input.  

I understand that to comply with Ofcom's GC3 as we move toward VOIP only (no telephone wires) the customer's equipment and the ISP's equipment would need backup power. GC3 says minimum 1hr backup, and there is some arguments for 4hrs. I read somewhere that in the consultation some telco's wanted this to be an option for vulnerable subscribers only. I would have thought that meant all the cabs would need backup power then in case someone downstream was vulnerable.  There was also an argument about most people having cordless DECT handsets which the base wouldn't work during a power cut.  

A neighbour pointed out that most people have mobiles which have decent battery life, and mobile cell masts likely have backup power. (Mobile networks remained live albeit a bit slow during the power cut). That sounds like a pragmatic solution. 

In any event, it would be interesting to know from Virgin how they fulfil Ofcom General Condition 3 and Section 105A of the Communications Act 2003 with no provision for backup power. 

[Roger_Gooner]

Ofcom now recommends only providing battery backup or other protection facilities to vulnerable consumers. For these people VM provides an Emergency Backup Line box, powered by a rechargeable battery, which enables calls to 999 and 112 via a mobile network.