Guest Book

I actually work in da biz Carol.... (telcom) and the infrastructure for cell and telco is complicated and interwoven more than most realize. Cell rides on telco lines from each zonal tower of theirs, typically. Telco and cell sites both anymore have critical route redundancy, and power back up via generators and battery strings. Extended multi day power outages start taxing the back up systems. Houses fed by land lines with fiber to the house typically have battery back up for the house unit, as it needs voltage to ring and optical doesn't do that. Old style telco copper to the house without fancy gizmos in the middle rings from the phone company voltage so the old adage was when the power goes out your phone still rings. It should still, but there are so many electronic sites in the string now, that large area long extended power outages will find any system problems. Usually reduced traffic is a result and not no traffic because it is multi routed anymore. The REAL problem is when a disastor hits, everyone and their mother is on the phones, cell and land ones, and what is usually 40% or whatever usage from peak becomes 100% with blocked calls on the overflow. Add in everyone cruising the net for updates and Peachheads hoggin' bandwidth blabbin' about techo and it gets jammed real quick. did I make any sense?