Been in conversation with our town's First Selectman about how the town might deal better with loss of land line telephone and networking connectivity capabilities during extended power outages such as the 4 plus days we went through with TS Irene. Down here were were lucky during the recent October Noreaster, our immediate neighborhood was the only outage in town, and we were back up in 16 hours. Guys like JJ and RKW had it a lot tougher. My son's place in Vernon only got power back a few days ago.
Been doing some reading up on the SLC equipment which is where the subscriber copper interfaces the fiber optic part of the phone networks. apparently the phone companies are required by Fee Cee regulations to maintain then in operation for only a minimum of 8 hours during a commercial outage. An AT&T tech at our local central office told me that they did not have any assets available in our area during Irene's aftermath to power them beyond the nominal 24 hours it took for the SLC battery backups to die.
I think our town should have a means of holding the telcomm utilities feet to the fire to keep these systems going during extended outages, especially for critical locations, or have the means to take matters into our own hands to power them up if the telcomm utility does not support.
Anyone out there have any practical/professional experience with powering such systems? For example, if one were able to power up the SLC serving a specific neighborhood, are you then back in business, or might there be another SLC upstream between you and the central office that would also need powering? Found this link to someone who has the same concerns as I do:
http://sffma.net/tech_info_powering.htm At the very least, it would be a goal to engage the telcomm utilities about how they are going to respond to extended outages in town in the future... or at least give the town a map of the SLCs so a plan could be developed to power them.
