The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires telecommunications providers to educate customers on the topic of backup power. If you have any questions, please contact the DataVision office at (503) 792-3611 or (971) 983-5500
Backup Power for Home Phone Services during Power Outages
Your residential voice telephone service is provisioned using fiber-optics. This technology requires backup battery power to continue functioning during a power outage. To avoid a disruption of home voice service during an outage – and to maintain the ability to connect to 911 emergency services – DataVision provides you with a battery for the backup power for your residential voice telephone service at the time of initial installation at no charge.
What Your Battery Can and Can’t Do
Backup batteries allow you to continue to use your home voice services during a power outage. Without a backup battery or an alternate backup source such as a generator, customers with fiber-optic residential telephone service will not be able to make any calls, including emergency calls to 911. The only way to maintain the ability to use your telephone is by using some form of backup power. The battery backup provided by DataVision does not provide power to any services other than voice. Home security systems, medical monitoring devices and other equipment will not run on a residential voice telephone backup battery.
Expected Backup Power Duration
Backup batteries are expected to last at least 8 hours on standby power. The backup battery should give you approximately 6 hours of talk time. If you feel that is not enough time, you may extend your standby power by purchasing additional spare 8-hour batteries. Please contact our office for more information.
Instructions for Proper Care and Use of Your Battery
If you do not store your battery correctly, it may shorten its useful life. Environmental factors such as temperature can shorten your battery’s life. We recommend that you store your battery above 41 degrees F and below 104 degrees F. These batteries are rechargeable when connected in our housing unit to electrical power. However, they will not last forever and may need to be replaced every three years, or when the indicator light for the battery shows that it is low or out of charge. You can also periodically test the battery backup by disconnecting the electrical power source (just the power cord, no other cords) to your ONT (optical network terminal). Please call us if you have any questions.