Fixed v's Mobile for Disaster Recovery

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DonGould

3889 posts

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# 98520 29-Feb-2012 21:45

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=98455&page_no=1#588568

Following on, because there's clearly interest but we were way OT in the other thread...

I agree with Neil, better mobile infrastructure comes at a cost, but in dollars and visual impact.

We are moving in to a fibre world and we do have to start thinking in terms of the end of unpowered devices in our homes.

Sure a POTS line might stay up, but who's going to have one?

Are the carriers going to keep exchanges running for the one guy in the street who wants to keep his POTS service? And then at what cost?

Neil says he pays for a POTS service yet he won't spring $50 for VDSL, that's ok. But how many people are going to live with that dynamic moving forward?

We don't have POTS now, it went a year ago from my house.

Like Neil I too live in Christchurch, and I live on the eastern side. I learnt a lot from the quakes. I had an inverter but could not put my hands on it when I needed to, I can now.

As for flat mobiles, we now have all mobiles that will charge by USB and 6 different power options ranging from must using a laptop to inverter in the a running car.

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tdgeek

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# 588583 29-Feb-2012 21:57

I dont feel the need for a powered landline, and I live in ChCh. I did pickup an old phone in Feb, as my cordless needed power but I don't know how many others I could not call anyway, as most won't have an older phone. My laptop runs off mains as its my coffee table machine, so that gives me a charging device. I now have a Apple dock car charger that will charge an iPhone or iPad2, so that covers me as much as can be expected.

kyhwana2

2458 posts

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# 588596 29-Feb-2012 22:10

Good point.. VDSL is the price of a POTS line these days..

oxnsox

1923 posts

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# 588597 29-Feb-2012 22:11

Watching "When a City Falls', Rodger Sutton had a short message about the reliability of buried infrastructure (particularly as he was talking to the PM at the time). So ultimately POTS or Fibre fails at the same gate.

Wireless?? How reliable was Cellular infrastructure in Christchurch after the big quakes? Better 2way services? Which of course are more limited due to the user/subscriber base, but theres less of an infrastructure issue.

Radio and TV?? Radio probably the best for keeping folk informed. If the station/network had competent reporters available. In a bad event they're caught up in it too.

In a major event you're going to be pretty much on your own for a day, or two; or week, or two. Hopefully we've learned that much.

But yes a wireless solution should offer more options. In part because of it's flexible portability.

kyhwana2

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# 588601 29-Feb-2012 22:16

I wonder how much HAM/CB/PRS radio was used during the quakes.. never heard anything about that side of things.

johnr

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# 588603 29-Feb-2012 22:24

kyhwana2: I wonder how much HAM/CB/PRS radio was used during the quakes.. never heard anything about that side of things.

Very good question!

alexx

635 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 588633 1-Mar-2012 00:53

If there is a POTS line there is a good chance that it comes from a cabinet with batteries that will soon be going flat. Same with the local cell site.

But at least with a mobile phone, you can walk to another suburb with working cellular coverage if you need to.

If for some reason you are injured and can't move, then the best phone is the one in your pocket, which again is likely to be the mobile phone.

I can't think of a single area where fixed is better than wireless, for low bandwidth applications in an emergency situation. Perhaps if your POTS line is from the exchange and you are lucky and the cables are intact...

Where fixed has an advantage, is when you and all of your neighbours want to download (or upload) high bandwidth content at the same time, as each xDSL line has it's own high speed transceiver, rather than all users sharing a limited number of transceivers at the nearest UMTS or LTE base station. But that is an advantage for business or entertainment, not a disaster recovery requirement.

#include <standard.disclaimer>

jbard

1371 posts

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# 588635 1-Mar-2012 01:13

johnr:
kyhwana2: I wonder how much HAM/CB/PRS radio was used during the quakes.. never heard anything about that side of things.

Very good question!

hamish225

1316 posts

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# 588870 1-Mar-2012 14:16

What i did after the 22nd earthquake was tether my 2degrees phone to my laptop and looked up the news websites and streamed some Isky to see if there was something on there.

I had just got a New 9 cell battery for it too, so it lasted for a few hours, kept me from sitting with noting to do until I got out to kaiapoi where they still had power.

DonGould

3889 posts

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# 589012 1-Mar-2012 18:28

hamish225: What i did after the 22nd earthquake was tether my 2degrees phone to my laptop and looked up the news websites and streamed some Isky to see if there was something on there.

This is the very last thing I'd think of doing, but I understand about network load to a point, it strikes me as a very reasonable thing for an average user to do.

This really makes my point why we need saturating mobile data. How much impact did this user put on the network that impacted on other users and caused techs additional headache?

When 9/11 hit, I jumped to the net for info in real time.

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chevrolux

4209 posts

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# 589023 1-Mar-2012 18:51

alexx: If there is a POTS line there is a good chance that it comes from a cabinet with batteries that will soon be going flat. Same with the local cell site.

There is a MUCH higher chance that it comes from the exchange which has batteries and a generator. Not many cabinets run the POTS out of PCM.

sbiddle

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# 589047 1-Mar-2012 19:52

chevrolux:
alexx: If there is a POTS line there is a good chance that it comes from a cabinet with batteries that will soon be going flat. Same with the local cell site.

There is a MUCH higher chance that it comes from the exchange which has batteries and a generator. Not many cabinets run the POTS out of PCM.

Large numbers of cabinets have VMUX gear now feeding into the NEAX VoIP linecards. There were a lot of cabinets with U/S copper feeders, so these were abandonded and all services delivered over the fibre backhaul.

Talkiet

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# 589053 1-Mar-2012 20:16

DonGould: [snip]

Neil says he pays for a POTS service yet he won't spring $50 for VDSL, that's ok. But how many people are going to live with that dynamic moving forward?
[snip]

I pay for a POTS service yet I won't spring $50 for VDSL because the extra $50 doesn't buy me $50/month worth of extra utility.

There, I fixed your comment.

Cheers - N

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