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#1
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Telephone company switch
Just curious.
Frontier has a building close to me that is used for the plain old telephone system. I was wondering what is in that building and what is it called? It has no windows. I found this. https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/telephone2.htm Andy |
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#2
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Telephone company switch
In message , AK
writes: Just curious. Frontier has a building close to me that is used for the plain old telephone system. I was wondering what is in that building and what is it called? It has no windows. In the UK, it's generally known as the "telephone exchange"; it is what's at the other end of the wires that come into your home. All the connection equipment, the bits that separate your telephone from your broadband (assuming you get that through your 'phone line), the switching equipment, the concentrating equipment, the batteries that keep it going during power cuts, and so on. I found this. https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/telephone2.htm Andy -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf [What's your guilty pleasure?] Why should you feel guilty about pleasure? - Michel Roux Jr in Radio Times 2-8 February 2013 |
#3
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Telephone company switch
AK wrote:
Just curious. Frontier has a building close to me that is used for the plain old telephone system. I was wondering what is in that building and what is it called? It has no windows. I found this. https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/telephone2.htm Andy CO - Central Office http://www.sandman.com/colookup.asp |
#4
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Telephone company switch
AK wrote:
Just curious. Frontier has a building close to me that is used for the plain old telephone system. I was wondering what is in that building and what is it called? It has no windows. I found this. https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/telephone2.htm Andy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_concentrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digita...ss_multiplexer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange And so on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...phone_switches Between cities... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchr...cal_networking Many (but not all) have battery_room + generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_room Sample buildings. What I find interesting about most of these, is there's no sign of emergency power systems. They've got to be in there. You need to have at least a battery room. I like how one of the pictures like this I could find, there's razor wire to keep people from climbing the fence. They don't do that here. Just a moat and alligators :-) http://www.co-buildings.com/az/520/ Finally, a sample with an external exhaust pipe. There is likely a generator and battery room in the section with the exhaust pipe. Sometimes the shape of the building, gives away what is inside it. You might be able to run on battery for 24 hours in some cases - but not in the larger COs that are "all digital", as they're power pigs. http://www.co-buildings.com/va/804/bethia_tb.jpg Even our cell towers here, finally got their own generators. But it took a prolonged outage, and all the cell towers going down at once, to make it apparent they needed to fix that. Now, when they put up a new cell tower, there's a cute little generator building next to it. The only problem with the cell tower idea, is I don't think anyone has a plan, to drive around to all the cell towers and fill up the tanks, if there is an extended outage. They're still probably depending on the power coming back, relatively quickly. Paul |
#5
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Telephone company switch
On 3/29/2019 12:17 AM, Paul wrote:
The only problem with the cell tower idea, is I don't think anyone has a plan, to drive around to all the cell towers and fill up the tanks, if there is an extended outage. They're still probably depending on the power coming back, relatively quickly. Paul Paul: Many emergency generators run on natural gas from a utility company. This is available mostly in more densely populated areas so the cell towers would stay up for a lot of users. Out in the boondocks - who knows. John -- |
#6
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Telephone company switch
John Dulak wrote:
On 3/29/2019 12:17 AM, Paul wrote: The only problem with the cell tower idea, is I don't think anyone has a plan, to drive around to all the cell towers and fill up the tanks, if there is an extended outage. They're still probably depending on the power coming back, relatively quickly. Paul Paul: Many emergency generators run on natural gas from a utility company. This is available mostly in more densely populated areas so the cell towers would stay up for a lot of users. Out in the boondocks - who knows. John My home is heated by natural gas. I think they like the comfort of having a captive tank full of diesel for the job. Same with the sewer pumping station, which has a tank of diesel. We have sufficient plumbing in the city, to run anything you could want on natural gas. It's everywhere. Sure, the natural gas system has a certain level of redundancy in it. But think about this. What is your earthquake plan ? The phone system has to run after an earthquake. If natural gas is leaking (trunk failure), it's going to be turned off. ******* Even a CO which is not on an active fault, has an earthquake spec to meet. The equipment frames are tied into members embedded in the concrete floor. The frames are allowed to "sway". For a certain amount of earthquake, there's a known amount of deflection allowed for. And the interconnecting cables are wrapped, with earthquake in mind. A CO in SF likely has a different spec to meet, than one of ours here. But even so, we don't rely on natural gas. And the phone company is filled with traditionalists. They will continue to use lead acid batteries instead of lithium, as the maintenance requirements on lead acid are well known. There's less chance of a fire. In the event of an air conditioning failure in the CO, the doors fly open, and the building is then air cooled. The room temp rises to between 40C and 50C, and all the equipment has to take that. And that defines the "temp spec". So if you're wondering why the doors have a "latch to keep them open", there's a reason. While lots of aspects of the phone system "look cheap", they do think about a few things. Who hasn't seen a pedestal housing a punch-down block, lying out in the weather with no protection, and nobody to care for it ? That's a trademark of the phone company. The only thing we don't do here, is lay cables on the ground. Apparently, some areas allow this. Our wires are always elevated. If it goes outside, it "flies through the air", so it's less likely to snag on something. Subdivisions have right-of-ways for such routing. Not even the cable TV guys lay cable on the ground here. It just isn't done. And the main feed (multiple fiber optic cables) to my neighborhood, is trenched below grade. That one isn't aerial, as there's a considerable barrier in the way. Even the hydro feed to the substation got buried. They could have used towers, but buried it instead. Just another one of those infrastructure rules at work... Paul |
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