snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:telecom26.172.1@telecom- digest.org:
He was stating that when you had an AC power failure, the batteries in
> the SLIC's only last for about 8 hours, then everything will go
> dead. This confused me because as someone with limited experience with
> SLIC's only at the cross-connects near the Demarc, the F2, or the F3
> (Demarc), that these things ran off of CO 48V, and usually there was
> no electric power to be had at the F2, or F3. Through an alcoholic
> haze when he started to talk about large currents it finally dawned on
> me that he was talking about SLIC's used around the Central Office
> (CO) or F1 that split one pair into thousands of lines? And I was
> talking about SLIC's that split one line into 2, 4, 8, or 16, so that
> an extra copper line did not have to be added on the street (F1 to
> F2), or from the F2 to the residence. With the glut of broadband, I
> was under the impression that all CO to CO, or CO to F1 traffic was
> done via optical fiber, so I'm not sure if these devices are still in
> use? And if this is a real risk?
As I have mentioned here a few times, whenever there is a power failure affecting my neighborhood, my Verizon line, from a SLIC across the street, dies within about 2 to 5 seconds. My Comcast digital phone line stays up and usable for about 30 minutes.
When the SLIC was first put in, we seemed to have at least 4 hours of standby from Verizon (or Bell Atlantic, or NYNEX, or NET, whatever.)
Before that, it would work for the extent of any outage, sometimes days. Bless CO power.
Ironically, it is only recently that Verizon has been advertizing that their service is "always on."
Paul