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The Telecom Digest for June 17, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 153 : "text" Format
====== 29 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== |
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Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:23:41 -0700
From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Battery power support today
Message-ID: <0cKdneDxX_xjo2TQnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d@giganews.com>
Lisa or Jeff wrote:
> semi-offtopic
> (Anyone know how many kilowatts of power are consumed by a telephone
> central office at the busy hour?)
>
It varies with the number of line appearances. At a given number of
line appearances (urban size office) SxS consumes a hughe amount of
power, then 5XBAR much less, and 5ESS/DMS-100 far less tthan 5XBAR.
I saw the power meter in the main Pasadena, CA CO when all but one
office code was SxS (the one code was 5XBAR for toll common control).
This was early 1970s. I don't remember the power being consumed but it
was humgeous (at about 2:00 PM).
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:57:06 -0400
From: tlvp <tPlOvUpBErLeLsEs@hotmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Comcast Taps Facebook for Enhanced TV Experience
Message-ID: <op.vw40lg1ditl47o@acer250.gateway.2wire.net>
On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:07:16 -0400, Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> wrote:
> Hollywood Reporter, 06/14/2011 by Georg Szalai 6/14/2011
>
> NEW YORK - Comcast Corp. is working with Facebook, Intel and other
> technology firms to create what it calls a next-generation TV
> experience, which will make the TV screen more interactive by adding
> Internet features and apps.
>
> "This new experience transforms the way consumers watch television
> with a new guide and user interface that makes the TV screen more
> interactive, personal and social," the cable giant said.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/3t56c7x
>
> Neal McLain
First the Theater tried to stimulate Audience Participation ... now
Comcast wants to make "the TV screen more interactive" ... but all
this audience member want to is to observe, passively and unseen, not
to participate :-{ .
Am I so unique in my wants? Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 19:11:31 -0300
From: Howard Eisenhauer <howarde@NOSPAMhfx.eastlink.ca>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Battery power support today
Message-ID: <6raiv6hde17aksodp9i2nrkgeoe2p26rd1@4ax.com>
On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:25:19 -0700 (PDT), Lisa or Jeff
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
[Moderator snip]
>It has been suggested that some central offices, remote switching
>nodes, and cell phone antenna sites, no longer have generators to
>supply power in a commercial outage after the batteries run down.
>This is troubling. Plenty of relatively normal nasty snowfalls can
>bring down commercial lines requiring more an eight hours to restore.
>A tough weather event would generate greatly increased telephone and
>datacomm usage, further taxing the power supply.
Very few cell towers are equipeed with generators these days. Gensets
tend to be maintenance intensive & prone to failure when called on to
run for more than a few hours. The current practice is to have,
depending on the location & how critical the site is to the
transmission network, between 8 & 24 hours battery backup. During
major power outages, operators will move portable generators between
sites, charging the batteries up then moving on to the next site. This
is labour intensive but cheaper & more reliable in the long run.
As for how much current a CO uses that's very much dependant on the
size of the office. I've seen medium sized offices drawing 1500-2000
amps [at] 48 volts, I wouldn't even want to guess what a large site would
use.
H.
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:19:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tom Horne <hornetd@gmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Battery power support today
Message-ID: <482ffaae-e702-4ef9-ab5d-4444bdd5c202@z37g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
On Jun 15, 6:11 pm, Howard Eisenhauer <howa...@NOSPAMhfx.eastlink.ca>
wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:25:19 -0700 (PDT), Lisa or Jeff
>
> <hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>
> [Moderator snip]
>
> >It has been suggested that some central offices, remote switching
> >nodes, and cell phone antenna sites, no longer have generators to
> >supply power in a commercial outage after the batteries run down.
> >This is troubling. Plenty of relatively normal nasty snowfalls can
> >bring down commercial lines requiring more an eight hours to restore.
> >A tough weather event would generate greatly increased telephone and
> >datacomm usage, further taxing the power supply.
>
> Very few cell towers are equipeed with generators these days. Gensets
> tend to be maintenance intensive & prone to failure when called on to
> run for more than a few hours. The current practice is to have,
> depending on the location & how critical the site is to the
> transmission network, between 8 & 24 hours battery backup. During
> major power outages, operators will move portable generators between
> sites, charging the batteries up then moving on to the next site. This
> is labour intensive but cheaper & more reliable in the long run.
[Moderator snip]
In much of the US the most common type of widespread weather emergency
is an ice storm. Since these storms cause both trees and power
utility poles to collapse into the street, that poses obvious problems
to mobile crews attempting to restore service or to keep sites
operational by recharging batteries with mobile generators. The other
weather caused threats to service availability include flooding,
wildfire (bush fire to Australians) and Hurricanes / Typhoons. I
deliberately left out tornadoes because tornadoes are not wide area
events and adjacent area infrastructure can usually provide service
except in the actually struck area. I also left out blizzards and
other major snow events because in the absence of ice they generally
effect transportation a lot more than communications and power.
Earthquakes can hardly be called weather but they do cause widespread
damage to communications infrastructure. If you think about how
earthquakes and wide-area weather events damage communications
infrastructure, you will probably come to the conclusion that all
types of communications infrastructure will be damaged by these types
of events. The wires and fibers on which all of these systems depend
are turned into plates of cut up spaghetti laying on or buried in the
ground by such events. A cell site can be completely intact but
without connections to other towers and the computers that operate the
system that makes no difference.
What may be driving public concern is the greater dependance that
people have on these systems and the fact that modern communications
has become more brittle with it's increasing sophistication. In 2003
my land line POTS telephone was the only utility that remained working
after Hurricane Isabel came through my area. It stayed working
because it was a wire line and it was powered from the exchange. I
had always made it a point to have one wired telephone connected on
the busiest floor of my home. Now I have FIOS or Fibre Optic Service
for the sake of the much faster data rate it gives me. Since fiber
cannot carry power my phone will die as soon as the battery in my
Customer Service Unit (CSU) is exhausted. The CSU has a button to
engage the remaining battery power in order to make an emergency call
after the CSU has shut itself down to avoid damaging the battery but I
only learned about it by studying the unit. Most Customers will not
even know of that button's existence. I also have a generator that I
maintain and test quite regularly but not many homes are so well
equipped.
One real barrier to public understanding of these systems is that the
folks in charge of them use security concerns to shield their actions
from public scrutiny. I volunteer in Fire and Rescue, and some years
ago my county was rendered radio dark by a shrew chewing through a
fiber optic cable. Since the details of the system are considered a
security matter I was threatened with disciplinary action for even
inquiring about the resilience measures of a system that I depend on
for my very life while crawling down long snotty hallways at 0-dark-30
in the blessed AM searching for other peoples relatives. When the
Volunteer Firefighters Association threatened political action the
Department of Information Technology pulled in their horns and claimed
it was all a misunderstanding.
--
Tom Horne
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:17:04 -0400
From: Pete Cresswell <x@y.Invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Battery power support today
Message-ID: <51ikv65904qgcvduq4srj5utlonmla847b@4ax.com>
Per Tom Horne:
>fact that modern communications
>has become more brittle with it's increasing sophistication.
After reading about the aftermath of Katrina (and knowing nothing
much technical...) I started thinking it would be a good thing if
there could be some sort of standard for cell towers and internet
connection hardware where, in a pinch, every box could be
operated from 12v DC. Seems like automobile batteries would be
in pretty good supply in almost any disaster...
--
PeteCresswell
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:05:22 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Battery power support today
Message-ID: <siegman-C100B6.12052216062011@sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>
Since the thoughtful discussion by Tom Horne <hornetd@gmail.com> at
<482ffaae-e702-4ef9-ab5d-4444bdd5c202@z37g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
contains the following sentence
> I also have a generator that I maintain and test quite
> regularly, but not many homes are so well equipped.
1) I'll toss in the following idea which my wife actually suggested
some years ago, and which I think is remarkably ingenious.
Suppose your gasoline-powered lawn mower included access to its drive
shaft in some way _from the top_, and the mower manufacturer also sold a
small free-standing (unpowered) generator with a matching fitting _on
the bottom_.
When the power fails, pull off a small cap on the top of the mower
housing, opening up access to the motor shaft a small distance down
inside a 1" or so diameter hole.
Drop the generator onto the top of the mower, firmly held in place with
some matching brackets or fittings on top of the mover enclosure, and
with its shaft making a mating connection to the mower shaft. Pull the
starting cord, and you've got electricity -- and in many parts of the
country your new primary power source will have been not just tested but
usefully employed once a week, most of the weeks in the past year.
[I've in fact been making use of a smaller but analogous single power
source, multiple accessory tool combination earlier this morning, in the
form of one of a remarkably useful hand-held Braun electric gadget which
a shaft which matches up to and powers a whole variety of kitchen
blenders and stirrers. And Honda in fact actually both gas-powered
mowers and gas-powered home generators, does it not?]
2) As another take on the same residential emergency power backup
theme: I have 10 kW of solar on my roof (large 4-household residence,
all on one meter, hence most of our usage would otherwise be at premium
rates that are much are than the baseline rate in our area). But, this
system goes out and becomes useless for generating 110 VAC if the local
utility power fails (and I understand why).
But suppose the inverters for this system included some very modest
additional electronics that could also divert a small fraction of the
juice from these panels to directly charge, _DC to DC_, a small array of
a half dozen or dozen of the standard 18 V or 24 V batteries that power
ordinary hardware-store variety power tools (drills, small saws, etc),
all sitting in a rack right beside the inverters.
Our local power company is knocked out for a week, but there's still
some sunshine? we could at least glean some renewable energy every
day to power small tools, maybe communications gear, lights for after
dark, maybe even some cooking.
And all the rest of the time, we could still keep these batteries
charged without the DC-to-AC-back to DC efficiency that's otherwise
involved in doing this.
I think I'll go talk to my patent attorney . . .
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 07:13:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Happy 100th birthday, IBM
Message-ID: <6bc0c660-0248-4ca5-8696-62a374bdb3ec@m10g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>
June 16th 2011 marks IBM's 100th anniversary.
IBM and its predecessors have been involved with the telephone
industry since their beginning. Western Electric supplied relays in
the early days. IBM worked with the Bell System to develop data
communications in the 1940s onward. In the 1960s the line between
communications and data processing blurred, resulting in various FCC
computer decisions. In the 1980s the world wondered if IBM and Bell
would be competitive rivals.
IBM offered private network telephone equipment in the 1930s-1940s.
This apparently was sold off when IBM discontinued its time-clock
equipment business.
In later years IBM owned Rolm, a telecommunications equipment maker.
more info
http://www-943.ibm.com/ibm100/common/images/junespecial/ibm_centennial.pdf
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