brief power outage dunks landline service for hours

[dbctronic]

This has happened in my area several times in the last year. We get a brief power outage, usually only a few seconds. After that, the cordless phone indicates 'line in use', and there is no dial tone. Also, internet does not work. A call to the phone company may or may not result in a 'known service outage' message. It takes anywhere from a few hours to two days to get voice service back, and usually internet service is restored later.
The last time, two days ago, we went down to the exchange building, which is a mile away, and caught a technician who had been dispatched. He vaguely blamed it on 'power surges'. Does anybody know what the real problem is? If it's surges, why are they happening so frequently now?

[Poroit]

G'day dbctronic,

Does this problem only occur during your Summer months when load is higher?

What USA state are you in?

[xrunner]

This has happened in my area several times in the last year. We get a brief power outage, usually only a few seconds. After that, the cordless phone indicates 'line in use', and there is no dial tone. Also, internet does not work. A call to the phone company may or may not result in a 'known service outage' message. It takes anywhere from a few hours to two days to get voice service back, and usually internet service is restored later.
The last time, two days ago, we went down to the exchange building, which is a mile away, and caught a technician who had been dispatched. He vaguely blamed it on 'power surges'. Does anybody know what the real problem is? If it's surges, why are they happening so frequently now?

Not enough information to begin with. You mention "landline service" but also internet is impacted. Are these not two separate physical connections to your house? Moreover, are they the same service provider for both landline and internet? I wouldn't think the phone Co. "exchange" would impact internet directly due to a power glitch, although the internet signal to your house can go down for a little bit due to the fact the internet equipment in the field does use power ...

The last time I had internet service over a landline was the old DSL provided by the phone company, and before that of course dial-up connection.

[dbctronic]

@Poirot and @xrunner:

Voice is VoIP, comes in on the same wires as internet.
Last instance was on a 75 degree day, and we've generally had a very cool spring and summer, so not really any days when air conditioners should have buckled the grid. And utility companies in general seem very closemouthed about any problems they are having, can't get real answers from them. Most of these incidents involve power going down for just a few seconds, so it's like they're switching grid sections in and out, but I don't know why. The fact that getting the exchange up and running is more than just some rebooting - took three hours to get VoIP back and 12 for internet - makes me think the servers are not well protected and some are getting fried.

[edpalmer42]

Sounds like your phone company is cutting corners on backup power.  If servers go down and have to be restored from backups that can be time consuming.  If the telephone switch goes down, that's even worse.  They're designed to be started once and run forever.  Fast startup just isn't a thing.

Does your state have some kind of telecom regulatory committee that you can complain to?  If not, then maybe the FCC?  Keep records of the outages and when you can show a pattern, file a complaint.

Edit:
This is definitely a '911' issue.  Brief power outages are common in emergency situations.  So just when you really need 911 it's not available??  I'd like to see your telco justify that!

[Siwastaja]

Sounds like very serious mismanagement, possibly criminal level negligence. Exact technical reason could be anything. Like a combination of two serious issues: lack of UPS and incorrectly set up servers which do not automatically start the necessary services at all or do it too slowly.

[dbctronic]

@ edpalmer42 and siwastaja:

Thanks for the directions. I'll follow up and see what I get. I'm in northern Indiana, and our power/gas utility (Nipsco) has generally been pretty good for many years. These power grid cutover outages have become more common just in the last year. But we've always had our issues with the landline service (Frontier), including shoddy customer service, so your indicated followup possibilities come as very small surprises.

[Poroit]

We have telecommunication ombudsman in OZ and I see you have a Federal Communications Commission that covers Indiana.

https://www.fcc.gov/general/indiana-trs

Maybe they could kick some butts?

[floobydust]

You can get ground-fault current that damages telco line cards or DSL modems.
The phone line is earth-grounded at the phone exchange a ways away, but your house can have earth-ground kick up if the power company does something that puts a surge on incoming neutral. Sometimes switching substation transformers or feeders can do that.

It sounds like the telco end gets fried and they take a long time troubleshooting/replacing/configuring the new line card.

I'm trying to say you might be getting high voltage surges between your house and the telco due to the utility switching something. Squirrels or birds shorting out power lines are usually not to ground but between phases. You'd have to ask them what they are doing.
DSL modem is usually floating - two prong wall wart and ethernet is usually transformer isolated, so the path for your home's ground to (devices) on the telephone line I'm not sure where that is. Some other thread here we talked about it and a phone surge protector could actually make things worse with gas tubes to earth ground.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/can-a-short-circuit-between-live-and-ground-destroy-a-telephone-line

[ejeffrey]

Does this only happen to you or also your neighbors?

[dbctronic]

@ejeffrey:

Happens to neighbors too.

I'm not getting my hopes up too high. Customers are abandoning landline service in droves, so anything that costs money to fix is in trouble.

[Wallace Gasiewicz]

We are in Central Indiana, Indianapolis.....     
We have a land line (POTS) that should not go out in power outages.  We pay for the land line because of this.   
The land line goes out with the power failure, but the land line can come back on before they restore the power.   
We have had frequent power outages. We have at least 20 outages every year. Some last for hours.     
We also have failures of just the Land Line including our internet.       

The utilities WANT the land line to go away and are not maintaining it as they should.