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FCC voting on rules for abandonment of copper phone landlines

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Solar panel recommended (Score: 2, Informative)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-08-21 20:53 (#J3DA)

For anybody without a landline, a cheap solar panel is a good investment.

You can use it to charge your cell phone (with any 12V car charger), or to charge your FIOS/U-Verse/cable-modem battery (requires in-line diode). And even without a ($40!) battery, you can use the panel for power directly, but only during daylight hours. It's equally useful to charge flashlight and radio batteries...

You just have to be careful about duty cycle with solar. In winter, with just 8 hours of low-angle sunlight, possibly over-cast weather, you might only get a very small amount of power from it. So be sure to always significantly over-spec.

Re: Solar panel recommended (Score: 2, Insightful)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2015-08-22 05:17 (#J473)

That's great for your devices - but if the cell towers lose power, you're going to have to shout loudly.

My sister lives up in Washington. When they had a rash of bad fires in her area, folks sometimes had power, but all the cell towers were out and there was no phone [inter]connectivity. For whatever reason, that doesn't seem to happen so much with the old copper wires.

I'm not against bailing on copper. But there are pros to it.

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Time Reason Points Voter
2015-08-22 20:15 Insightful +1 pete@pipedot.org

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