When copper goes away, so will "robust" phone systems, big central switches, and line-powered devices such as ringers and flashers (for deaf people).

What good does as battery back-up do when power goes down and your local fiber-box (NOT backed up by batteries) goes down with it.

When Sandy struck around here, our (copper-based) phones worked just fine. Fios, Comcast and the rest of them did not until the providers put a small portable generator chained to each pole with a box. That took about 48 hours. Some cell towers were down after their batteries local failed - again until the providers brought in generators. But those were a bit larger. Power was out for a full seven (7) days.

Although we have a generator, our phones never failed during that time, even for a moment.

And for those who are really paranoid - a conventional dial-type ringer phone on a copper network fed from a central switch remains pretty much immune to EMPs. Lot of good that will do, except for, perhaps, the roaches.

Peter Wieck