[LINK] Batteries again [Was: Future of Telecommunications in Canberra]

[Tom Worthington]

David Boxall wrote:
> On 15/05/2011 3:02 PM, Tom Worthington wrote:
>> ...
>> Transact is now installing Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) ... battery backup ...
>
> The concern with batteries is, as always, health and environmental 
> impacts ...

Having technicians replace the batteries in FTTP equipment should make 
recycling easier. The replacement can be scheduled (with the option of 
the network reporting on current battery health) and old batteries put 
through a recycling scheme in bulk. This is better than customer 
installed batteries where you cannot be sure what they do with the old 
batteries.

A bonus might be that the network could provide some smart grid 
functions. If the system reports when mains power fails, then this can 
be used to plot problems with the electricity grid. As Robin Eckermann 
pointed out in a Smart Grid talk, at present the power company only 
finds out a customer has no power when the customer calls to complain. 
The company then has to send people out in a truck to drive along the 
transmission line to see where the break is: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/03/smart-grid-energy-revolution-for.html>.

> ... landline is not our only (nor, in an emergency, 
> our best) option, is the convenience worth those costs?  ...

The average householder is going to expect that their new NBN
connected phone service is at least as good as the service it
replaced. In theory a combination of mobile phone and land line without
backup could be as reliable (or better), but dealing with the political 
consequences would not be easy. It would only take one dead pensioner, 
found with a non-functioning NBN phone in their hand, for an expensive 
retrofit of battery backup to be ordered by the government.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra