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Telecom carriers, regardless of their size or market, are facing challenges in powering their networks that weren't present a decade ago, and are likely to become more acute in the decade to come. Everyone's networks are growing-more customers, more lines, more services, more competition.
All this growth adds up to a general, industrial version of comedian Tim Allen's chant: "More power!"
So what are service providers doing about it? They're checking out possible solutions ranging from new battery technology to fuel cells and state of the art flywheel generators for providing stopgap power as needed, plus keeping closer tabs on the state of the deregulated power utilities on which they rely.
"The population has moved more and more to suburbia, so the local loop is longer," says Kevin Lu, executive director-integrated access and operations at Telcordia Technologies Inc. "There are more remote electronics outside the central offices, so it will become a more challenging issue for carriers to remotely power those electronic locations, especially, with DSL deployment, and voice being carried over IP over DSL."
Here's why: Not long ago, ILECs engineered their networks so that power was concentrated in the central office, where it was needed most. Ten years ago, a visitor to an ILEC central office would have seen a Class 5 switch powered by the local utility's AC power grid, backed up with a room full of lead-acid batteries and a generator. If the CO was built originally for an electromechanical switch it still might have housed the beast, which still would have been clicking and clacking away in 1990 as traffic was shifted to the digital switch.
That central office would have drawn between 2,000 amps and 3,500 amps, according to Barry Papermaster, vice president of marketing and sales for power systems at Lucent Technologies Inc. Papermaster's group is in the process of being acquired by Tyco International.
Now, the electromechanical switch is long gone. The Class 5 still is humming away, but it has lots of company. Where the electromechanical switch once lived, there are co-location cages filled with the switches, routers, DSLAMs and other gear belonging to competitive carriers. The new central office may draw 10,000 amps, Papermaster says. And while each POTS line running through the office requires about 2 watts of electricity, the presence of DSL equipment and service in the central office increases that load considerably. "An ADSL line might be 6 or 8 watts," Papermaster says. "A cable modem might be 25 watts. Then there's hold-time-the time it takes to complete a call. As long as you're on the (POTS) phone line, that line is being powered. And cable modems and ADSL lines, they're always on, so there's always power going to that line."
All this is happening at a time when the power industry is being deregulated. Twenty-four states have opened their electricity markets to competition, and this has meant that many telecom industry officials view the public AC power grid as less reliable than it once was.
The national electricity deregulation picture is still shaking out.
The deregulation has not gone smoothly in many parts of the country. When the first wave of deregulation was implemented in 1999, there were summer power outages in Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois and New York. California experienced similar problems this summer and again in recent weeks due to a cold spell in the Northwest that sapped inadequate electricity supplies.
Some former power monopolies have become distribution companies selling power generated by other suppliers. This has meant that large consumers such as ILECs and network service providers can't always be sure where the power came from.
"For example, if you were an aluminum producer and had a big plant with excess heat, and if you take that heat and generate electricity, the local utility has to buy it from you," Papermaster says.
But there is no guarantee that such an aluminum provider will be selling electricity in the future, and that means that ILECs are interested in finding new and more efficient ways to power their operations. This is especially true of remote operations.
An ILEC that had 10 central offices in a medium-sized city in 1990 may now have 10 central offices, 150 vaults and 1,000 cabinets, according to Sharon Sugarek, senior manager of product marketing at Lucent. "It becomes hard to know where everything is," Sugarek says. "People forget where they put cabinets. It's amazing."
Bill McNamara knows where everything is in BellSouth Corp.'s network. McNamara, director of research planning, says his biggest challenge is providing back-up power to his outside plant. Increasingly, he says, BellSouth is deploying batteries to remote sites. Batteries in remote cabinets are exposed to the elements, including summer temperatures as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit. They last three-and-a-half years, instead of 10. For now, BellSouth is working with its lead-acid technology to back up power in remote sites. But McNamara and his colleagues are examining other possibilities.
"We're looking at other battery technologies, like nickel cadmium and lithium polymer," he says. "They have longer life, but higher first cost. We've also looked, and believe in many cases it makes sense to use standalone DC generators at remote sites. We've looked at flywheel energy storage systems-basically, a mechanical battery. You spin a heavyweight cooler to the 15,000 or 20,000 RPM range and keep it spinning for decades, if the reliability is what they claim. We're looking at fuel cells, too, which is the direct conversion of hydrogen and oxygen into electricity."
But CLECs and other competitive carriers, in a hurry to get to market with the latest gear and lacking the time or the staff to adequately forecast power implications, are often guided by their vendors' specifications about power requirements. This, in turn, creates some challenges for wholesale carriers.
"Some (new carriers) are more informed and have been in the industry longer," says Kyle Smith, senior supervisor of IP and access services product marketing at Williams Communications. "Others are telling us what their vendors say they need, and there's no real thought process going on."
Vendors are building new equipment-switches, routers, DSLAMs, etc.-and setting the power specifications higher than networks are used to, Smith says. "They'll sell a box saying, your maximum draw will be 100 amps, and they'll (the wholesale customer) come to us and say, 'We need 100 amps'," he says. "Well, nobody uses 100 amps, except for startup spike. The maximum draw we usually see is 15 to 20 amps."
Smith says he and his colleagues try to engage the customer in a dialog about power requirements, but there isn't always time for that. Consequently, he says, Williams and everyone else must plan and engineer the network to handle the greater draw on power.
And if they don't do it right, those cries of "More Power!" could become pleas.
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