On 10/16/19 12:09 PM, Jeff Shultz wrote:
Interesting! And so primitive! So they go to all of the expense of laying fiber, but not power too? Note: small local telco experience speaking below:
Telco's tend to have experience with fiber, but probably not the construction and transmission of the sort of power plant that would be required to keep a bunch of 48V cabinets up and running reliably. We certainly don't. Besides, an advantage of fiber is that hopefully the copper thieves won't bother it.
By definition a remote terminal/cabinet is going to be... remote. Far more simple to install commercial power, and then haul out a generator if the battery string in the cabinet appears to be in danger of dropping below about 46v.
We do run some 360v DC at micro-amp levels out to equipment like ONT's and remote 12 and 48 port remote VDSLAM's. But that's over existing 24-26 ga. plant. Frequently using multiple pairs to avoid excessive voltage drop over distances.
Primitive is tested and works.
This is all very interesting, and thanks to everybody for giving me an education. My provider is very small as well, and spread out over a pretty large area (i'm in amador county in the mother lode). I don't know how many remote terminals they have, but i would think that it would be a lot. And if they need to be recharged every 8 hours or so, you'd be talking about a lot of people out in the field just to keep the lights on, right? And of course it takes time to recharge a battery too, so that makes it even worse. It seems that would be a pretty significant recurring cost. How many watts does a typical remote terminal draw per subscriber? Mike