DSL in the USA and Power Outages

TGregg

TGregg

I'm considering DSL as backup broadband, and have a quick question. In the USA federal law or regulations (forget which) require phone companies to provide phone service during a power outage (which is why they send juice down your lines to make your phone ring).

Since my local phone company (Bell South) provides DSL service, I'm wondering if I can UPS/Laptop to the net through DSL in spite of a power failure. Any thoughts?
 
Quote from macal425:

I would think you couldn't as your DSL modem requires power.
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Thus I utilize the advanced UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) to run my modem :cool: . Question is, will there be something on the other end of the wire to talk to it?

EDIT: I'm not talking about trading all day of course. I'm talking disaster here, have a position and the power drops :(. All I need is a quick and dirty way to get out of the market.
 
You should be fine that way provided its not a catastrauphic power outage (like the whole city goes down). But its also no different than a cable modem...as long as the modem and computer have power, it should work provided the CO or cable office is still running. I have my modem, one monitor, and my pc plugged into my UPS battey backup so I can get flat if that happens.

I just started using Bellsouth DSL, and I am happy with the connection when its working, but I have had at least 2 complete disconnects each day (that last about 5 seconds) which causes everything connected to the internet to have to reset...trading software, charting, IM messengers, etc. I basically have to restart everything which is very annoying when I have trades on. I was using cable before that and was getting brief hiccups (like 1 second or so) that would occasionally disconnect things, but not always. It was the main reason for the decision to try DSL. It seems to have gotten worse. Just wanted to caution you and see if anyone else was experiencing this.
 
Thanks WarEagle. The problem with cable is our switch is at the end of our street, so it's on the same substation as my house :(. (Our whole "subdivision" is one street with about 3 dozen houses).

EDIT: So I presume that when power is out to our street, it's also out to the cable broadband switch. Never actually tried it out though.
 
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