[mdlug] It happened...

[Robert Meier]

> Absolutely.  I keep it around because the POTS have their
> own sustained back-up power system, whereas cell-phones
> towers are much more reliant on the local grid ...

AFAIK, the FCC tariff still requires telephone providers to have
and maintain backup power supplies adequate to keep their system
up and functioning during a power blackout.

During the multi-state blackout a few years ago,
my Michigan phone continued to operate normally.

Unfortunately, in my experience, enforcement is spotty.
In 1980s Northern NJ, whenever we had a power brownout,
the telephones went dead.  In 1980s Silicon Valley,
and 1990s Chicagoland (except Naperville) the emergency
service and emergency management agency expected the
phone service to die during any problem,
due to the suspicion that the local telephone suppliers
shaved costs illegally by selling off their backup power
equipment and ignoring grounding/lightning-arrest requirements.

In 1992(?), at Bell Labs Indian Hill,
I was involved briefly in a case where a Northern
New Jersey telephone provider chronically complained the ESS
dropped and misdirected calls too often.
I learned that despite repeatedly being informed that the telephone office
must be radio shielded and the ESS properly grounded,
a telephone operator had been non-fatally electrocuted
a few months before during a lightning storm,
as she and the others routinely listened to their am/fm portable radios
in the office.

Reporting,
-- 
Robert Meier

  "Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical."
	    -- Yogi Berra