When WightFibre recently announced the completion of their ‘Big Copper Switch-off’ a full ten years ahead of the rest of the UK, some interesting questions were raised by readers.
News OnTheWight reader, Laurentian, asked what would happen if there was a power cut and a Wightfibre customer needed to make an emergency phone call.
Laurentian explained that the old copper wire system had a completely separate power supply (batteries at the exchange) that was independent of the mains, meaning if you did have a power cut, you’d still be able to make 999 calls if needed.
Customers can sign up to the Priority Register
News OnTheWight got in touch with Wightfibre who were very quick to come back with their responses.
A spokesperson told News OnTheWight,
“We have something called a Priority Register which covers a lot more than just the phone line in the event of a power cut.
“Any customers on the Priority Register and who qualifies, receives a free battery back-up which will last long enough until the power is restored or at least for them to have made their emergency call.”
Eligibility for Priority Register
Wightfibre customers who meet the following criteria can qualify for the Priority Register.
You are eligible if you:
- Are disabled or chronically sick
- Have a long-term medical condition
- Have a hearing or visual impairment or additional communication needs
- A Wightcare customer
You will need to provide proof of one of the following:
- Disability Living Allowance (DLA)
- Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Attendance Allowance (AA)
- Blue Badge
- Armed Forces Independence Payment
- ESA
- Medical Evidence Letter
- Registered as a blind person or partially sighted
Not all old “copper line phones” will work in power outage either
The Wightfibre spokesperson added,
“It is interesting to note that not all of the old “copper line phones” will work in a power outage either.
“As Openreach upgrades their old network to full-fibre, they have already started to replace copper with full-fibre from their exchanges to the local street cabinets and that means that all their street cabinets also require power to work, so if they do not have battery back-ups or generators installed, homes connected to those cabinets will not be able to use their copper lines to make a call either.
“They know this and why they have had to push back their copper switch off until they have a solution in place.”
Power to the street cabinets
We also asked about power to the street cabinets and the spokesperson from Wightfibre replied,
“Our big cabinets are actually connected to generators so they will kick in and run for as long as needed. The small street cabinets all have UPSs installed that will run for a good couple of hours.
“We are lucky that most power outages only last a short while, but in instances when they are longer than usual, our network is full of ‘alarms’ that let us know what is wrong, where, and gives us ample of time to react before anything goes down.
“This means we have a 100 per cent network uptime, all the time, on our full-fibre network. If any of the cabinets are running out of power, we send an on-call engineer out with a generator to go power the cabinet until the power comes back on.”
Find out more
The battery back-up is also available to any of Wightfibre customers even if they are not registered on the Priority Register, at a small monthly fee of £2.60.
You can read more about the priority line service via Wightfibre’s Website.
