[Boatanchors] WAS Goodies NOW Bell

[GRANT YOUNGMAN]

In the very old days, it was true that telco COs had copper to every endpoint, and had massive wet cell battery banks to keep things running as long as the CO wasn’t put out of commission by something.  

However, the system hasn’t looked like that in a very long time — except maybe in some rural areas with very small Central Offices.  SLCs or (Slics) are neighborhood or area subscriber line concentrators that feed user endpoints with copper, but which are connected back to the CO via T-1 or greater spans, some copper, a lot more fiber these days.  The voice channel is digitized there, too —  depending on the Slic’s technology into either TDM channels or VoIP channels.  In any case, you haven’t gotten CO battery power at your kitchen landline for a long time.  It comes from limited (8 hours if you’re lucky, more likely maybe 2 hours) battery associated with the Slics.  When that’s gone, your phone line goes dead.  If the Slic is damaged your phone goes dead even if the CO is up and dry and humming along.

We live in a world of limited battery power, and limited failsafe — whether it’s wireless, wireline, or tachyon beams :)

Grant NQ5T


> On Apr 12, 2015, at 7:54 PM, Jbrannig at verizon.net wrote:
> 
> The central office battery bank is great, but without wires, and poles,  to carry the voltage .....pretty useless...
> 
> 
> Local Telco's have been abandoning POTS lines for several years.  Fiber requires much less maintenance.
> 
> 
> After the Sandy flooding, all of the copper lines in lower Manhattan were replaced with fiber.
> 
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> On 04/12/15, Rob Atkinson wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 7:28 AM, <Jbrannig at verizon.net> wrote:
>> Sandy:
>> On Long Island we lost power for two weeks.
>> 
>> I'm on a fiber optic network, FIOS, and the back up batteries lasted about
>> two days.
>> A moot point since the telephones require 110VAC to function.
>> 
> 
> Exactly. But POTS is on its own 40 v. system with huge banks of
> storage cells in central offices. It stays up.
> 
>