Without power, the phone computer goes out. No phones work. Can't happen, some say. There are thousands of electric companies. A failed transformer took out the grid, as I recall.
Answer is maybe, or it depends.
How many of the power companies will fail at the stroke of midnight. The odds that they will all function correctly is very small. We will see. The BEST explanation I have read why re-programming mainframe computers is a problem. Return to the Translink general commentary on Year 2000 .