larry wrote:
Uncle Monster wrote:

Correction, the main backup at phone company central offices
is banks of batteries. There are generators but the battery
banks can keep the phone service up for days. If anyone wants
to know about storage batteries, the phone companies have a
great deal of knowledge and experience. The battery rooms at
at phone company central offices would astound you.

Update! The large Central Office battery rooms are shrinking fast:
Solid state equipment is more power efficient.
CO's are now unmanned.
CO only has 12-24 hr battery.
CO has no generator.
Lead and sulfuric acid are banned or hazmat.

It's much more cost effective to pull up a portable 50KW Onan at the CO
building and "plug" into the charger buss. One portable can easily
support a dozen COs during long, wide area power outages and "parked"
where needed.

The cell sites work the same way.

The phone companies are quietly doing away with the massive lead
liability they had. Find a piece of lead jacketed phone cable these
days, and figure the tons of lead leached from aerial cable.

Your copper phone line is now powered from a local neighborhood fiber
fed "hut" or RemoteTerminal and a few automotive sized batteries. It's
not a big city thing either, rural Adams County Pa now has many more RTs
than COs!

All this new fiber stuff is moving the RT and terrabits to your back
door ;-)

-larry / dallas


Did you go to the site I posted? It shows the new technology
in batteries that are now in use and there are some pictures
of the remote equipment and the newer battery rooms. I have,
on more than occasion, dug up lead sheathed power and telecom
cables. Before the advent of solid plastic UF power cable, the
only thing that worked well for direct burial was a romex like
cable with oiled paper insulation and a lead sheath. I've come
across old telecom cable that had oiled paper insulated small
wires in lead. I'll bet it was a real chore to make water proof
splices.

[8~{} Uncle Monster