Publicly Available Telephone Services

Publicly Available Telephone Services (PATS) means a service available to the public for originating and receiving national and international calls and access to emergency services through a telephone number or numbers in a national or international telephone numbering plan, and may, where relevant, also include one or more of the following:

(a) operator assistance,
(b) directory assistance facilities,
(c) directories,
(d) pay telephones,
(e) service under special terms,
(f) specific facilities for end-users with a disability or with special social needs, and
(g) non-geographic services^[1]

Resilience

A plain old telephone service has high reliability and is unlikely to be affected by local power outages. More modern systems require battery back-up to guard against local power outages. The United Kingdom telephone regulator, Ofcom, has published a guidance note for telephone service providers: "Protecting access to emergency organisations when there is a power cut at the customer’s premises".^[2]

References

^ Electronic Communications (Universal Service) Order 2003
^ https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/123118/guidance-emergency-access-power-cut.pdf ^{[bare URL PDF]}