Something to think about.

The West side area of my city just had at least 1 transformer failure resulting in a major area black out. I was prepared with several LED lanterns and flashlights as were the crew at my office.
Without Electricity powering our phone system, other than by cell phone we had no way to call out in most of Our building, except at the front counter which has a spare jack with a old style rotary phone that doesn't need power other than from the phone lines to operate.

I'm having a battery backup wired into our phone system for future power outages.

I know my home phone is via the TV cable and it has a limited back up built in the modem that will last a few hours. But when that goes, no phone unless I plug the modem into my home UPS unit.

Our cell service continued to work, but was often busy from the volume of calls using the system.

How many have a way of charging their cell phone should you lose power?

I have a vehicle charger that stays in my Yukon full time and my personal support kit has spare 120 volt and 12 volt chargers, as does my BOB. I can plug my UPS into my Generator and run chargers off the UPS when I'm home but I often travel and who knows what is available where I might be at. I think I'll shop around for a "crank" or AA battery phone charger to add the my emergency supplies.

"...How many have a way of charging their cell phone should you lose power?..."

I always have a cig lighter cord for the cell phone I own, and have a power inverter stored in the vehicle. I have purchased a few of those AA battery cell phone chargers, and they NEVER have an adapter for the phone we own. I must have a box full of those things stored somewhere...

I wouldn’t count on that. I have my entire computer and cable broadband system plugged into an APC UPS here. I have seen several (not all) power outages in which my cable modem stayed operational, but the cable service was unavailable nonetheless.

There many routers and junctions in between your cable modem/phone adapter and the cable company’s head end, and each requires backup power. Not all power outages seem to take the cable down… especially if the power outage is short, but do not be surprised if you do not get a dial tone even though your cable modem is still up and running.

This is a good reminder to me to get my supplies together. I also have mismatched chargers that are not compatible with my current cellphone and also need a couple of inverters.

Btw, if you're looking for an old-fashioned, corded phone, check thrift stores. In my locale, they go for $2 or $3 each.

I have two extra batterys for my cell that stay charger all the time, I also have a truck charger that stays in the truck as well as a charge2go that takes a AA battery, the charge2go has saved my butt more than once before I bought the two extra batterys.

Those typically have battery backup as well. I've reported my home power out many times via the power companies web site using my laptop and cable modem powered by battery. The large power outages we had from hurricane katrina the power company web site kept an interactive map of outage locations and expected power restore times.

Two sources to look at. Energizer has MANY different AA phone chargers that are manufacturer specific. Inside those packs are many adapters. Home Depot is where I got mine. I may have old adapters laying around as we all just changed to a single common phone from 5 different one's.

Second is Targus has a Universal laptop charger that comes with adapters, (phone on one side/mini USB the other). Then energizer has a mini USB AA charger.

PM me phone MAKE / MODEL and I will check for extras about to hit the trash.

It's amazing how few people have a corded phone any more. Many don't even know that there is such a thing as a line-powered phone. No wonder they freak out when the power goes off: it's as if civilization has come to an end. I always tell people to wrap up their old corded phone and tuck it in the basement.

On the cell phone side, I've gone back to simple Nokia candy-bar phones, which can do voice and text and not much else. But they punch out a signal even when smart phones have conked out. The beauty is that the chargers have a standard-size barrel plug, and extras are easy to find in the $1 bin at the secondhand store.

I always have 2-3 corded phones in the house, and so far, have not switched to things like FiOS so that I can have a POTS phone

I have a pair of Army field phones and wire to string out if I need them at a shelter for comms - I also have a Butt set in my go box, along with a linemans nut driver....

I had the phone company install a spare line at my office that has a cheap phone plugged into it, not through the system so always a backup.

I have backup battery pack that has also has an AC inverter, for charging cell/laptop, plus jumpstarting, compressor, etc.

I also have a crank up cell charger. And a solar panel that can slow charge a phone.

Mid 90's I worked for a company that dealt with 911 systems. We have a bunch of spare parts in the office and one day lost power. The ups on the phone system started beeping after a couple hours so I wheeled one of the spare ups's back to it and plugged the phone ups into it. Then as that ups would run low it had charged the phones ups up to where it would run things long enough for me to swap in another. Kept the system up for several hours that way.

I still have and use a rotary phone in the basement. No power required.

I expect I have enough bits to rig something, but I'm not sure I'd need to. I keep mine charged over 50%, and in a long-lived powercut I'd turn it off to save power. Then I'd only be using the batteries when I needed to make a call, and that wouldn't be often. With voice mail and text messaging people can leave messages for me which I can pick up by, eg, switching the phone on for a few minutes a few times a day.

I have a cig lighter charger for my phone, plus a DC to AC converter, and a full tank of gas in my truck at all times. I also keep a second truck battery fully charged.

Currently I use a standard PSTN or POTS handset VOIP phone connected to a wireless VOIP cable router and DSL modem. These are all powered through a UPS. The UPS should maintain the DSL connectivity for around 5-6 Hrs continously. Internet connectivity can then be accessed using a wireless connection via an Archos hand held media player.




Additional devices such as SW radios, portable digital TVs, Desk lamps etc can be powered using the UPS, again for short periods. A mobile phone can also be powered using a conventional charger.

If the UPS dies then the phone will switch to a conventional PSTN or POTS line automatically.

The next addition will probably be a Network Attached Storage NAS (rather than having the desktop PC switched on) to store all my media such as DVD, MP3s etc as the Archos also make quite a nice media streamer for the main large screen digital TV in the downstairs living room.

A future upgrade for the router may be required also to the Draytek Vigor 2910 or Draytek Vigor 2820Vn with 3G Cellular Data (3G backup) i.e. when the pricing for 3G connectivity becomes more attractive.

For my NYR (New Years Resolution), I vow to stop using pnemonics in my posts so everyone knows what I'm talking about.

My apologies for the all the acronyms. I guess I've been working to long for BT. Oops I did it again. I mean British Telecom. I seem to have caught the disease for which I used to complain about myself.

http://www.btplc.com/Glossary/index.htm - for a simple guide to the acronyms used by British Telecom and these are just the commonly known ones - they have dozens more pages of their own internal acronyms. If fact they have acronyms within acronyms.

you can spell it all out and chances are i still won't know what you are talking about. i am so far behind the power curve in that area...

10-4, 11-98 when you're 10-98 and aren't 10-6 at #10...

As long as you aren't 10-15 at county
Starting to wonder if CA and OK used the same 10 code. According to sick daughter, one arm'd typing isn't and excuse to use 10-code. She just doesn't understand.

actually, by Fed law, they are supposed to stop using 10 codes - everything is supposed to go to plain speech, per the ICS and NIMS (Incident Command System and National Incident Command System)

They still use them around here. Police showed up at our next door neighbors house and I grabbed the scanned and hard something like a 10-52 so I did a quick internet search and it said that was a stabbing. Couple days later the lady renting the house came back with a police escort to get her belongings and had a big bandage on her neck telling us that her babies daddy found her and stabbed her.
I've moved out of there now and the area I'm in now uses digital trunking so my analog trunking scanner doesn't do much good, I may just sell it.

This egear dynamo led light comes with a cigarette lighter adapter. If you have a cigarette lighter charging cord for your cell phone you can charge the phone with the lantern. But you'll be doing a lot of cranking if you want to make many calls.

http://www.essentialgear.com/store/p/2-Dynamo-15-LED-Collapsible-Lantern.html