how will sky protect vulnerable customers in changeover

[t.nugent]

We live in a rural area where we have frequent power outages.   Our sky hub takes some time to reboot every time there is an outage, whether just a flicker or longer period.

My wife is disabled and it is essential we keep a working phone line in the case of an emergency.

Today Sky rang us to tell us that BT would be switching off their lines this summer and ours would be one of those lines.   The caller had NO technical knowledge whatsoever,  and was unable to tell us what our options would be, just gave us a call centre number to ring, which appeared to be a call centre in India,  where it was managed by someone who may have English skills, but the heavily accented language was impossible to interprete.   I had to hang up because nothing made sense,

I believe that Sky HAVE to provide a power pack to vulnerable people, or at the very least a phone that WOULD work even in the case of a power outage.

Whilst we DO have mobile phones, these are often reliant on the Internet signal as other cover is intermittent at best.

Can anyone advise if they have resolved this problem with Sky at this stage, or what actions I need to take to ensure my wife's safety.

[SKY1992bf]

@t.nugent  are you 100% certain it was a genuine sky call?

[Mark39]

@t.nugent we've seen previous posts here from vulnerable Sky landline users who have been provided an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) so that the landline/broadband services can be maintained during a power outage.

You may have to be persistent to get one. Depending on your personal circumstances,  it may be best to register with Sky Accessibility who I suspect are more likely to be aware of the existence of UPSs.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/accessibility-information-sky-mobile-broadband-and-talk-customers#

[TimmyBGood]

@t.nugent 

Incidentally there's nothing special about an Uninterruptible Power Supply provided by an ISP: it's a constantly trickle charged battery with output to router and ONT (where applicable)

Given Ofcom only mandates ISPs to provide one hour of backup power, far better units are available independently.

[Mark39]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

@t.nugent 

Incidentally there's nothing special about an Uninterruptible Power Supply provided by an ISP: it's a constantly trickle charged battery with output to router and ONT (where applicable)

Given Ofcom only mandates ISPs to provide one hour of backup power, far better units are available independently.

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I have one for my BT landline (though more usefully it protects my broadband service). It's supposed to last for up to 4 hours,  but hasn't been tested in anger yet.

[t.nugent]

we had  a phone call out of the blue, an asian sounding gentleman said to us that our sky talk landline service would be changing over sometime this coming summer , i said to him that as we live in a rural area we are prone to power cuts so we need to have a working phone in car of emergencies ,the mobile signal is weak at best so having a working landline phone is essential , i've read an OFGEM report that phone providers must provide a solution to this problem , a suitible rechargable battery system seems to be what has been mentioned m but going round in cirles trying to get help from sky to sort this out for us , this gentleman who rang said he did not have any techincal knowledge and gave us a customer service number to ring which frankly was of no help , could understand the accent of the man i was speaking too .

[Mark39]

@t.nugent have you considered registering with the Accessibility team, as I suggested previously?