I have been working for the last twelve hours to diagnose a problem with my ONT and I think I've finally figured it out. The issue was that the ONT was not getting power. The problem is that because there is a pretty substantial battery that seems to work for hours(!), I was not aware that the unit was getting power. Apparently, the wire leading into the breaker the ONT was on had been loosened, but because it was still getting power from the battery there was no alarm. However, there is some function that after five minutes on battery power, the ONT stops feeding internet access to the router unless you reboot the system. There did not seem to be documentation anywhere that, for my ONT unit at least, if the battery light is green then the unit is drawing power from that and is not getting external power and it is only a matter of minutes before internet will be down.
I decided to document this here because I spent a long time googling and searching these forums for a solution and no one *quite* managed to indicate this one. Long story short: check the outlet that the ONT is plugged into to make sure it is live. There may not be a clear indication that the power is out from the ONT itself and the five minute timeout could be its response to working on battery power.
Which model ONT is present? The Alcatel-Lucent 211 isn't supplied with any sort of battery backup. One is available, but requires manual intervention to be useful.
Verizon is pulling failed BBUs. Fios users can purchase a solid UPS to support the ONT during a power failure. 🙂
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