I guess you must have really thought this witty retort out. In the grand scheme of things your intelect forgot that not everyone has cell phone reception at their residence. There is a reason its called a mobile phone not a home phone, smartass.
...although there are significantly more towers today, than 7 yrs ago when this was last posted!
Took Josh a while to come up with a good reply.
Twenty five years ago (yes, back in the stone age) Motorola had a line of cordless phones that did, indeed, have battery backup in the base and would work (for a while) in a power failure.
I had one...
I have a corded phone that I plug in when the power goes off . Once I have talked with our power company I can decide if it's worth the effort to fire up the generator . If the outage is going to be less than 4 or 5 hours I don't usually bother unless it's a hot midsummer day and I need to keep the freezer powered or lose food . About cell phones , there is no coverage here in The Holler , and too few customers to make it profitable for any provider to install a tower .
I keep mine plugged into the UPS. Don't want to miss any robocalls during a power outage.
I ran the power for my kitchen phone on the second line wires, with the "wall wart" plugged into the UPS that also powers my network equipment. Works great.
I have my phone connected to a UPS. The last long (5 day) power outage was from last year's tornado, and the UPS didn't help since ALL the wires were down. Unexpectedly, cell phones worked (except immediately after the tornado, when they dropped a lot of calls).
BTW, that was just before 7PM and I didn't start the generator until next day. No frozen food was lost.
BTW2, that tornado was the only time I've been in really scary weather.
I have 3 cordless phones** and a base station with a wired phone. If the power goes out, some of the fancy functions of the base station don't work, but the phone does.
**I like my setup so much, I bought three more extensions. The Answer button one one of the original ones requires more pressure than it did, and they sell kits to repair those buttons, but the instructions are complicate, require takign the phone apart!!!, so it was easier to buy spare extension. Readers know how che.... thrifty I am, so the repair must have seemed really hard to me.If the base station fails, I have another one of those somewhere, but it uses a cordless phone. I have a standard Western Electric phone in the basement but it's hard to reach. I'd find another phone and plug it in .
When there's a power failure, I just start eating. Ice cream first. Seafood second. Even after three days, the food was fine. Everyone in Baltimore wants compensation for lost food from the power company. I don't get it. No one has a smaller family than I do, and I never lose any food. Just don't open the door more than necessary.
I recently found another computer map program with a topo setting, and I found out the valley I'm in is deeper than I thought. 60 feet instead of 40.
I wouldn't notice except I think it limits the breeze. Do you see that in your Holler?
Two cell towers only a quarter mile away, so I suspect I have a good signal her.
It's not as much how deep The Holler is as the fact we're 10 miles from the nearest town in a sparsely populated area of the county . We're probably a few hundred feet below the highest point between us and town . We have to drive (or walk) a mile or so to high ground up on the highway to get a signal . Doesn't seem to block the wind , but AFAIK we've never had a tornado touch down here .
That'll do it.
I don't really know if it's blocking my wind or not. Maybe my neighbors half way up the hillls don't have much breeze either. But I think one reason people build their homes on the *top* of hills is to get a breeze. At least I think so.
I know the thread is old...
beware, if you have Verizon FIOS, even your wired phone will go dead during a power failure unless the Verizon ONT unit on the side of your house has a battery backup which Verizon feels YOU are responsible to maintain.
M
I'm halfway up a hill. The reason the house at the top was built there is because that was the lot that was for sale. Same as mine and every other house on the street.
its called ppl want land lines
You are a bit late after 13 years, stupid.
And just in case anyone still wants an answer,any cordless phone withthe base connected to a UPS. Been doing it for over 20 years.
In Ye Olden Daize, as in 1995ish, Motorala had a line of cordless phones which, they emphasized, were actually made in the US (hence the name "America" in the group), and..
and, for good measure, these actually included battery backups in the base so yes, these could be used in a power failure.
They also encrypted the radio link, which back then was a Big Thing.
My multi-handset cordless phone (Panasonic) works during a power failure. There's no battery in the base, but it gets power from the handset left in the base. You can make calls from another handset (or use speakerphone).
I also have a Panasonic cordless phone. In the past (but not in the past 6-7 years) when I had plain old copper wire analog phone service, I never lost my dial tone during a power failure and the Panasonic power failure feature worked as advertised. However, since the advent of digital service, with "gateways" (modem + router in one box) that don't even have a backup battery compartment, unless you have the gateway plugged into a UPS, you'll lose service even if your wireless phone has backup power. Actually, FWIW, Comcast has told me that in the event of a power failure, even a UPS won't help me because their hardware that runs between their central servers and my building will lose power as well so there won't be any signal coming in to my gateway. Glad I have a cell phone with a different carrier. At least they have emergency power for their cell towers that should outlast a typical power outage.
My cable phone gateway has a backup battery, and it is on a UPS. The cable node at the end of the street has a backup battery as well, although the last time we had an extended outage, it only lasted about 4 hours. The company brought a portable generator around, but we were still without service for several hours before that.
I have looked at some cell phone towers near here. Those do have generators on them.
Last time we has a major storm (IIRC, tornadoes), cell phone service was unavailable (working, but busy). Maybe too many people were trying to report the power outage or make sure relatives were safe.
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