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Comment by kotaKat | Hacker News Reader

Verizon forces me if I want battery backup for my ONT to provide 12 D cell batteries.

https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/battery-backup/p...

What a fuckin' joke.

There's some sense in which I prefer this, though, because at least I know how to source D batteries and they're a commonly available standard and I know exactly what their shelf life is. I might even have spares around in my emergency kit for things like lanterns and radios. I've also seen Verizon battery backup units that run on small lead-acid batteries which seem to need frequent replacing, and require me to look up the details and order from a specialty vendor every time... more annoying to keep extras of those on hand and tough luck if it reaches end of life shortly before or during an emergency.

> Verizon battery backup units that run on small lead-acid batteries which seem to need frequent replacing, and require me to look up the details and order from a specialty vendor every time..

Have you? All of them I've encountered take a very standard 12V lead-acid battery - the same one that's inside consumer UPS units - and you can get replacements from a dozen brands on Amazon and other vendors.

I probably have to replace them every 2-3 years, though I imagine alkaline D-Cells would be far worse.

In my experience, the bigger issue with Verizon's battery backups was that when the battery starts failing, the device beeps loudly every minute. That's especially problematic in apartments, as it tends to be within earshot of the bedroom. And the battery backup system is present in the ONT box even if you don't have phone service, or ever want it; and even if you own your home, it takes a lot of complaining to get Verizon to remove it. Horrendously stupid design.

> All of them I've encountered take a very standard 12V lead-acid battery - the same one that's inside consumer UPS units - and you can get replacements from a dozen brands on Amazon and other vendors.

There's about 70 different sizes for these standard 12V lead-acid batteries though. And most of my consumer UPS units hide the battery behind a security screw and don't list the battery size in the docs. If the battery was removed and not replaced, it's harder than it should be to find a new one.

You can get amazonbasics NiMH D-cell batteries for $24/4-pack.

Tricky bit is getting a good charger if you're getting them for a device that doesn't charge its own batteries.

And ignore the bold text saying not to use rechargeables?

I've been ignoring those for decades with no ill effects.

If you look at the voltage curves, Alkaline batteries start at higher voltage than NiMH but drop below NiMH voltage pretty quickly, so unless you have a device that stops working when your alkaline batteries drop below 50% charge or so at 1.2V, there's no reason to avoid NiMH.

It my not be a big deal for a completely solid state device but definitely pay attention to those notices for anything electromechanical, the issue isn’t the voltage but the current draw. And given that your broadband device is a transmitter, it could possibly matter at the margin…which for the topic under discussions could be precisely were you need it.

Can you elaborate on that? AFAIK the only real upside of the current draw properties of alkaline batteries are for very low draws where you'll get some additional runtime out of them. (e.g. I can swap the alkaline batteries in my tv remote every 5 years rather than charging the NiMH batteries every 2.5 years.)

If it cared about current draw would it still say not to use lithium D cells?

And I thought NiMH was better at current draw than alkaline.

NiMH provides higher current draw than alkaline.

I think a solution to this is mandate providers provide a cellular interface for households for emergency response, with battery backup. Basically a mobile hotspot with a phone jack, speaker, microphone, and red button to call for help attached to a chonky batter pack. Device inventory and health is required to be reported to regulators.

This solves for power, and reporting means it’s trivial to log and audit if the devices are online and available for emergency service calls.

If a mobile tower isn’t available in the area, a tower must be made available for the sector coverage.

Anything else in a world of fiber to the home is compliance theater, as your example shows.

That doesnt help when a natural disaster cuts power to an area for more than 24 hours. Cell towers dont have multi day battery capacity and with everyone calling their loved ones in the effected area they will be even more congested than normal. So even if they do have power your still likely to lose signal when the towers get ddosed by everyone trying to use them at the exact same time.

You see the same thing happen when theres a mass shooting and you get tons of people calling 911 and then you get a ton of people calling their loved ones to find out if theyre okay.

The cell towers also rely on an internet backbone so if you lose power long enough to lose internet then you lose cell towers even if they have all the power they need.

You could try putting all the communications infrastructure on a high priority circuit or something but unless your going to build out a hardened power grid parallel to the existing one, that would only cover you from load shedding not from natural disasters or even just power lines sagging on a hot day until they short circuit and blow the grid. So im not sure it would be worth the cost.

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