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Ltryptophan's avatar

How come when the electricity is down telephones still work (even cell phones)

Asked by Ltryptophan (12091points) July 17th, 2011

Shouldn’t we just run the electricity on a beefed up version of whatever the phoneline is running on? My limited understanding of how this works tells me that the landlines need such a small power supply that typical power outages wouldn’t easily cause a problem.

That said, the cell towers need considerably more power for the antennae right?

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