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While power-starved Californians continue to endure dark homes, offices and dormant streetlights, major telecommunications providers have weathered the energy crisis more or less intact. Armed with massive diesel generators and backup batteries, most of the major providers are finding the rolling power blackouts less a crisis and more a nuisance.
For SBC Communications subsidiary Pacific Bell, the backup power system built into the Baby Bell's network has kept phones and DSL lines lit, according to Chuck Smith, president of network services. There also have been no problems when the power comes back on, and a flock of DSL modems log back onto the network.
"We have not had any impact from the power situation," he says. "None. Not one."
The network and the central offices are already designed to withstand far more catastrophic events such as earthquakes, floods and tidal waves, so by comparison these short power outages are "really minute," he adds.
"It's very predictable," he adds. "I know where there is gong to be a power outage and the stage three alerts."
That emergency system includes diesel generators at all of Pacific Bell's 750 central offices. Each office is monitored from Pacific Bell's network operations center, and as soon as the system senses a power outage, a transfer switch starts up the diesel generator to maintain the power. The generators are tested for one hour each month to ensure they will supply the juice.
"We very fortunately are benefiting by the redundant design of our network," he says. "That's not to say we like starting these engines and going through this, because it is very inconvenient."
Inconvenient as in operating under emergency status, with an emergency operations center on continuous standby, Smith says. And then there is the cost increases from using more diesel fuel.
"Certainly fuel will be an added cost to our business," he admits. While he could give no estimate of the cost increase, "certainly it is not an inexpensive item."
But for Smith, the real impact centers on the customers, as power goes out in their homes and businesses.
"Our customers are disheartened by this," he says. "It's important to their business and their ability to do business, so that concerns me."
Meanwhile, competitive digital subscriber line providers are banking on that same system to keep their collocated equipment powered. A spokesman for Rhythms NetConnections Inc. says there have been no service outages for the DLEC.
Covad Communications Inc. has also weathered through the outages with no service interruptions, according to spokeswoman Martha Sessums.
The company's San Jose network operating center and other facilities in California have a backup battery switch that supplies power during the blackouts, and so far the system has worked.
"There are absolutely no problems there," she says. "It worked just beautifully and it was absolutely transparent to the customer."
Although it is new to the telephone game, AT&T Broadband's network of backup diesel engines and batteries has kept cable telephony lines ringing without interruption in its Northern California service areas, according to spokesman Andrew Johnson.
"The backup power systems we designed have been working exactly as they were designed," he says. "It is pretty much the way we would do it if a car accident took out a power pole-just multiply in 100 times."
Ironically, preparations AT&T Broadband made for the Y2K non-event are proving worthwhile now, Johnson adds.
"The Y2K thing really helped us more in tightening up the redundant systems in place," he says.
Cox Communications Inc., meanwhile, has so far dodged the bullet because its operations are centered in Southern California.
"We have not seen any impact yet-we haven't seen any rolling blackouts in our area yet," says Leo Brennan, vice president and general manager for Cox's flagship Orange County system.
Even so, Brennan says a combination of diesel-fired generators and batteries will maintain the core network and cable telephony customers should the outages spread to his system.
The story is much the same for nationwide backbone operator XO Communications, which has a San Jose hosting and network center that manages about 250,000 shared-host Web sites and a few thousand customers with dedicated Web servers. Mark Fisher, senior vice president of hosting for XO Communications, experienced the rolling blackouts first-hand recently while in San Jose. The lights went out, but not XO's network.
"There was no operational impact to our network or our data centers throughout the state," he says. "Because we kind of thought it was our turn, we had our diesel generators running in standby. When the power went down, our UPS system, which is a big, industrial-grade set of batteries, clicked in instantly. The generators then picked up the load after a couple of seconds."
As with other providers, the diesel-driven electric supply can carry XO for multiple days as long as fuel is provided, Fisher notes. But so far the blackouts have been short, and the financial impacts minor.
"We're paying some for diesel fuel, but we operate the generators monthly on a maintenance basis anyway," Fisher says. "The costs are probably negligible. But I think it's safe to say having to manage this-the people and the environment-is not something you want to do on a sustained basis. We want to see the problem straightened out."
The one impact XO has seen comes when business customers call in after a rolling blackout.
"Customers will call and say 'Hey, I think our site's down,' when in fact they can't see it because they don't have any power," Fisher notes. "It sounds kind of stupid, it actually has happened a couple of times."
The blackouts will have some impact on transactions, as customers' servers lose power and the XO-managed Web sites can't transfer updates or e-commerce sales info to them.
"But these are 90-minute intervals, so as long as the site is up-which is our job-their customers really would see no impact whatsoever," Fisher says.
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