Jon Danniken wrote:

"Jethro" wrote:
Whenever I have a power outage, I also lose all of my phones - dial
tone and all. If some calls me, a recording says all circuits are
busy - which of course they are not. This has been happening for over
a year now - during which time we have had several outages.

This loss of phones is for all my phones, some of which are cordless,
and two of which are corded.

When power is restored, sure enough, phone service becomes restored
some 30 or so minutes later.

My immediate neighbor does not lose his phone during the same outages.
Yet his immediate neighbor does just like I do. This same random
choice of working phones versus non-working phones occurs throughout
this community of some 100 houses.

All I get is a song and dance from the phone company. They say they
will look into it, but do not.

Anyone have any ideas?

Does it happen if you flip off your main breaker?

Jon

If it doesn't happen when you flip off your main breaker, there is a
good probability that the telco has a local SLIC pedestal somewhere
nearby with a failed or defective battery backup. You and your neighbors
may be on circuits to that SLIC while other neighbors are still on old
copper to the regular central office. It's also possible that you are
all connected to this SLIC pedestal and it's battery backup is
functional, but a particular frame within the SLIC ped. is not
functioning properly on the battery power. Getting the telco to properly
dispatch a tech to properly inspect and test that SLIC ped. will be a
challenge since the CSR you get when you call typically doesn't have a
clue. Calling the telco from a cell phone during an actual power failure
when the problem is actively occurring might get them to test at a time
when they will see that the SLIC is not reachable. Good luck.