| From: Alvin Starr via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Bell and Rogers are now both offering VOIP based home phone services. | I assume that they have batteries to keep things running in the event of a | power outage but It would be interesting to have someone on list confirm that. | I remember many years ago working with an ISDN ATA device from Bell that had | NiCad batteries that did not last all that long and had real degradation | problems. They try to hide the fact that their "home phone" service is over VOIP. For one thing, I think that they have dedicated bandwidth so saturating your internet service won't break your phone service. Rogers has or had UPS built into the home phone box. And they have batteries on their neighbourhood boxes. (During a long power failure, they even brought a generator for the one near us.) Bell had a UPS built into their home internet+phone boxes. But not the latest ones. (The old Bell system had large lead-acid batteries in the COs. Old handsets were actually powered by the CO. Modern ones have their own power for many functions. So we used to expect the phone to work during "hydro" failures.)