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clifft · 24-03-2013, 03:44 PM

Well my local cabinet has been down since 18:30 Friday. Underground power cable fault apparently. Low priority fault and snow slowing down repairs. Not a very resilient service. At least with adsl any power supply issue at the exchange would be fixed asap. 3g and a bit of unofficial tethering to my tablet is keeping me connected to the outside world. Glad I do not need it for business.

Matt · 24-03-2013, 09:42 PM

(24-03-2013 03:44 PM)clifft Wrote: Well my local cabinet has been down since 18:30 Friday. Underground power cable fault apparently. Low priority fault and snow slowing down repairs. Not a very resilient service. At least with adsl any power supply issue at the exchange would be fixed asap. 3g and a bit of unofficial tethering to my tablet is keeping me connected to the outside world. Glad I do not need it for business.

Hi,

Just to confirm that your service is now restored and once again we apologise about this issue and time it has taken for Northern Power Grid to restore power to your local cabinet.

We have also expressed our concern regarding the time it has taken for the issue to be resolved but we believe this down to the fact that it was only affecting street lighting and our fibre cabinet and not residential or business customers premises etc.

Thanks
Matt

clifft · (This post was last modified: 24-03-2013 10:21 PM by clifft.)

Thanks Matt. No issues with you, however seems strange having cabs on street lighting circuits which are low priority. not much use fo businesses. cheers cliff

Still no dsl link. will ring you in morning.cliff

alexatkin · (This post was last modified: 25-03-2013 07:43 PM by alexatkin.)

Pretty sure all VDSL cabinets are on street lighting, its the only place to conveniently hook them into. I agree its worrying, as in some areas street lighting seems to be incredibly unreliable.

The only other alternative would be to run its own circuit all the way back to the nearest sub-station which would be stupidly expensive and messy.

clifft · 25-03-2013, 09:08 PM

National Power grid were still digging holes up the road from the cabinet this lunchtime, and looks like my service came back during the afternoon. It was out for almost 3 days. It would make me very wary of using vdsl for anything critical.

alexatkin · 26-03-2013, 01:00 PM

This is what worries me about the future when BT start ditching the copper back to the exchange in favour of hooking everyone up to fibre at the cabinet instead.

I already read some pretty nasty stories about people in the US who had their lines forced onto FTTP by their telco so they could ditch the copper back to the exchange. Of course this is in New York and after Hurricane Sandy they basically lost their entire landline for weeks because even when the battery backup in their CPE was working, the cabinets running the fibre itself had lost power. Pretty scary stuff as obviously the local mobile cell towers were down too.

This is where classic POTS still wins, if your line is underground or on a pole that hasn't been taken out, it usually would still be working in these situations. So a pure fibre line is quite the national security risk IMO.

***Chalky*** · 26-03-2013, 02:58 PM

(25-03-2013 07:43 PM)alexatkin Wrote: Pretty sure all VDSL cabinets are on street lighting, its the only place to conveniently hook them into. I agree its worrying, as in some areas street lighting seems to be incredibly unreliable.

The only other alternative would be to run its own circuit all the way back to the nearest sub-station which would be stupidly expensive and messy.

@clifft originally specified that it was an Underground Power Cable fault, so even if they did run a separate circuit to the cabinet, it wouldn't have made any difference in this case. I'd imagine in the power company's eyes, this would have even less of a priority than street lighting!

alexatkin · 26-03-2013, 04:42 PM

You are probably right, street lighting should be a priority.

Its funny though because the few times I have complained about street lights being on all day they claimed it was an underground power cable fault too. I don't get how that is possible, surely they cannot short circuit to on?

***Chalky*** · 26-03-2013, 05:29 PM

I wouldn't have thought so, I've seen a street light with the cover at the bottom removed and it had a little fuse board inside. Not that I'm an expert or anything!

I would have thought that would be a fault with the photocell or timer.

alexatkin · (This post was last modified: 26-03-2013 05:35 PM by alexatkin.)

I don't understand how they work now. I'm pretty sure it used to be that one light on the circuit had a timer and the rest fed off that, hence why they turn on in sets.

However if that was still the case, how can you wire a VDSL cabinet to them? There must be a constant voltage available which begs the question of what triggers the on/off cycle. It doesn't make much sense for every street light to constantly have power, but it seems like they do.

Pretty convenient if you leave really close to one and want to save on your electricity bill. Angel