@Baldrick1
Thanks, do you mind mentioning what make of phone that was, please, and will it sit in a charging cradle all the time, like a DECT phone?
My current mobile phone is a Nokia, as I can't get on with touch screens, I need to feel buttons to press! That phone cannot be left on charge all the time, there is a warning in the manual not to do that, hence the reason I leave it in the car for emergency use if we are out and about.
We have three DECT phones (Panasonic ones), plus a simple phone plugged into the master socket for emergencies (as the DECT phones stop working during a power cut - we have a few of those here every winter). I've set up another simple phone with a second hand analogue telephone adapter, battery back up power (for power cuts) and a (surprisingly cheap) Andrews & Arnold VOIP service as a temporary measure. I've done this mainly as an experiment, in preparation for the time when our PSTN line ceases to work, so I have some feel for the viability of such a solution, with the intention of switching it to use the phone number we've had for many years if it proves to be reliable.
For the month or so I've had it working it hasn't been that good. It works OK except it's not much use during a power cut. Despite the battery back up at my end, which keeps the router and phone adapter powered for a day or so, the broadband goes down about half an hour into a power cut. It seems there's not much in the way of backup power provision from Openreach. This isn't really acceptable, as the chances are fairly high that a lengthy power cut is the very time we may need to make an urgent call (if only to 105 to find out when the power is coming back on).
I have another possible solution to try to retain connectivity when the power fails, but that is proving to be a bit harder than I expected (especially on a limited budget). I do wish that whoever came up with the idea to turn off the PSTN had though through the issues that those of us living in rural areas face without a landline phone. I can't believe that we are alone in struggling to get something with the same reliability.
