On-site fuel storage is one of those double-edge swords. Without on-site fuel there are several "ordinary" disasters which would be worsened if the telecommunications infrastructure went dark. For example, during ice stores, hurricanes, etc we want telecom facilities to stay up for one, two or three days, depending on how long you believe it will take for the roads to be passible for fuel trucks or the power to be restored.

This is a good example of an area where governments can intervene and do some good. 1. Local governments can prohibit fuel storage and generators at telecom sites. 2. Local governments can make it easy for telecom site operators to set up local generators and store fuel at sites that are near the telecom sites but not too near. Right now, people put the generators and the fuel in the same building because it is virtually impossible to install your own neighborhood power cabling. But there are few disaster scenarios in which a PoP would be undamaged at the same time as the nearby powerstation is out of action or disconnected. If the local power cable takes a different route from the power utility's cable then backhoe disease is avoided. If the local powerstation blows up, we are happy because the PoP is still running on utility power unlike the current situation. In fact, a single municipality could plan this as an integral part of their telecom infrastructure so that there are multiple telecom hotels spread far enough apart to avoid fate sharing and each one of them could be served by two local power stations, each of which serves several telecom hotels. These would also be spread apart to avoid fate sharing with utility power substations and cabling. If you were offered a colo facility that supplied AC power from one utility and two local generator substation sources, would you rate this better or worse than a colo facility that contained its own in-house generators and fuel storage tanks? P.S. What if the colo facility offered built-in water chillers for cooling with all the water piped downhill, down the block to a cooling tower? Would this be better or safer than existing systems? Could it possibly be built this way without municipal government involvement? --Michael Dillon