The big power play

When Edison illuminated the first incandescent light, he joined the revolution that unwittingly forged a permanent bond between American business and power systems. Consumers and corporations quickly came to rely on electricity, and U.S. utilities became the envy of the world.

The new invention also fueled telecommunications. But unlike other industries, telecom built its reputation on the highest level of availability. Even when AC power goes down, telephony is expected to remain in service.

Nowhere is an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) more critical than in today's broadband applications. These systems are designed on real-time performance. Any glitch in the power source can mean millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Internet service providers are a case in point. The woes of ISPs unable to keep up with consumer demand are exacerbated by Americans' expectations of a high level of telephony service. When they don't receive it, they'll jump ship in droves.

If your customers are the ISPs themselves, that expectation is magnified.

"Many business plans that are working today are credible only as they are able to secure a per-transaction revenue stream coming from the Net side of the world," says Mike Trest, chief scientist for ATMnet, which became the first company to commercially deploy an asynchronous transfer mode backbone network in October 1995 (see map).

The network typically serves regional ISPs or large corporate accounts for which ATMnet carries Internet or Internet protocol-based intranet traffic. The company also carries private-line voice service and is preparing to haul public switched voice service.

"We have many customers like First Virtual Corp. that are in the electronic cash business. If they don't get electronic cash transactions, they can't live off the float or fees associated with those transactions. No transaction, no network, no revenue," Trest relates. "Those people are absolutely, adamantly attached to the network as a source of business. We attract that kind of customer because we give them a choice of the level of power and network redundancy that they need to match their business requirements.

ATMnet's novel marketing approach features two plans based on different powering scenarios. The most secure option co-locates equipment with telco operations, powered by AC and backed up by DC to the -48 V telco standard. Standby generators give the scheme a deep bench as far as power is concerned, but the plan is not without its challenges.

"In the telco spaces, we're running into constraints on available amperage every day," Trest says. "Every time we go into a co-location space, whether our equipment is on a rack, in a cage or on a floor of the building, if we are on their power supply, they give us absolute fixed limits because of the power engineering demands behind it.

"They have to have available reserves for all of their business clients who are co-located," he says. "They can't have me become an open drain on the system. From an engineering side, they control it by putting a breaker or a fixed valve on it. If I exceed that breaker, then I'm the one who suffers, not them." For customers who don't require 100% continuous power, ATMnet designed access centers that house equipment in commercial buildings. A UPS system backs up the AC power supply and generally provides three to four hours of battery backup.

"We are constantly having to work on a case-by-case basis because not all the buildings that we go into have either battery or generator capacity. So we have to insist on its availability or contract to allow us to provide it from outside," says Trest.

Because ATMnet preaches "the religion of power stability and redundancy," customers who take heed are shielded from AC power failure. During the Southern California brownout in late 1996, only four of the 3163 domains on the ATMnet backbone lost service because of the outage.

But overall, the on-line community is remiss in giving customers a heads-up where power is concerned, according to Trest. "Internet suppliers, even national-stature Internet companies, today are not generally aware of this [power] requirement and are not making it part of their business approach to advise their customers of its effects," he says.

"For the integrity of the Internet as a whole, I have been on a soapbox encouraging our industry participants to get with the program and become aware of this issue. They must take the required professional steps to do the job correctly. What is at risk is the public's perception of the value of our entire industry.

Overlooking the obvious Far too often, power is an oversight. Equipment manufacturers don't generally design with it in mind. Yet without the proper balance of power, networks fall to their knees and traffic comes to a screeching halt.

"When you get into broadband or any other complex industry, you've got to have adequate power. But some vendors don't consider it a major driving factor," says Jim Godby, technical manager for U S West. "We might find a piece of [network] equipment that fits our power needs perfectly, but the hardware won't provide the needed bandwidth. So you wind up with this problem that vendors sacrifice power needs to meet some other economic-service delivery.

While much of the newer digital equipment operates at more efficient levels than analog, carriers often operate both kinds of equipment simultaneously and must plan power for both. They also have to consider the reach of their power source and its associated costs.

"The problem with power is that the farther you move it away from the central office, the more it is going to cost per kilowatt-hour, per the amperage of energy you are using," Godby says. "One of the things we are trying to drive in all the standards is to minimize power consumption per the line hardware we provide for our customers.

"It's like buying a car that gets five miles to the gallon or buying one that gets 30," Godby says. "What you want is a method of getting highly efficient units that have minimal power consumption and some way to distribute that power. And you've got to address it before you start putting the stuff in.

"Corporations have got to wake up and say, 'Hey, we can't put this high-current equipment in. We can't afford equipment that's going to kill us on daily utility rates.' It might not be a big deal to a few companies, but if you are a large corporation, the cost can kill you.

The price of power There's no getting around the need for electricity. The trick is to manage its escalating price tag. The cost of electricity in 1995 alone was more than $66 billion for U.S. commercial use and an additional $47 billion on the industrial side, as reported by the Energy Information Administration. With such a drain on corporate resources, prudent consumption is paramount.

Perhaps those best positioned to take advantage of the increased efficiencies of newer network equipment are carriers that are just now building out their networks. They're not dealing with the constraints of powering older systems alongside more efficient models; they're working from a clean slate and can make the most of every energy dollar.

Building a network and ensuring adequate power can be quite a balancing act, as one company from middle America can attest.

MCI Communications' predecessor company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Telecom*USA, was a private-line carrier built by local entrepreneur Clark McLeod. He grew that company into the nation's fourth largest long-distance provider and sold it to MCI for $1.25 billion in 1990.

In 1991, McLeod started over with his latest venture, McLeod Inc. and its McLeodUSA fiber optic network. Now with 2000 route miles and a plan to expand into 12 states over the next two years, the company is in the midst of an aggressive growth stage.

In addition to carrying voice and data traffic for its private-line customers, McLeodUSA also markets local, long-distance, on-line and paging services, and it will soon offer local loop access. McLeodUSA rounds out its integrated communications package with 26 basic trading area licenses for personal communication services in a com- plementary five-state region.

While operating in the construction mode has its advantages from a design perspective, the fiscal view is decidedly more restrained. On one hand, the objective is to power a system at the premium level of availability, or 99.999% of the time, which McLeodUSA does. On the other hand, the revenue stream may not be in place to equip for such performance. Therein lies the balancing act.

"The telephony industry may be the most staunch industry as far as [system] availability goes," says Lee Seydel, vice president of network development for McLeodUSA. "Our engineers have long histories in telephony and tend to be very adamant about the types of power that they need and the types of availability and response times that they have to have.

"It's difficult in some cases to mix cost control with that sort of history," Seydel says. "Probably the most significant struggle that we face is actually getting our engineers to have another look at what they're spending on these kinds of components and to come up with engineering solutions for cost management as well as for availability.

McLeodUSA devised a three-tiered approach. At the foundation are points of presence designed with enough power to accommodate the company's projected growth for the next three years. All AC systems are backed up with batteries-some with fixed generators and others in remote locations with a fleet of portable generators.

The next tier is enhanced service centers that are located in urban areas. These route a greater volume of traffic and are supported with 24-hour battery supply and fixed generators that back up the AC power.

But the heart of the McLeodUSA powering system will reside at its 160,000 square foot technology center, currently under construction. The center will house the critical functions of networking operations, monitoring and switching centers, and it will be fueled with three different supplies from the power grid to avert problems with substation outages. Multiple UPS systems and generators add to the center's redundant energy reserves.

"We're looking for reliability in all these systems," says Seydel. "We are paying a lot of attention to the cost associated with providing power and trying to limit the cost of our network but without limiting its availability.

Special requirements New entrants into telephony bring their own requirements for power schemes. Most notable are cable companies, which are somewhat unique in their reliance on power. Traditionally, they did not have to provide the same continuity in terms of power as telephone companies. If the power failed, television sets would not run and cable customers wouldn't notice if the network also had failed.

But when cable companies tossed their hat into the telephony ring, they upped the power ante. As they begin to provide video-on-demand, interactive cable, Internet access and even PCS, their customers will expect them to provide the same standard of reliability that the other service providers deliver, namely the telcos.

Companies such as Telect, which makes power distribution fuse panels, are getting more requests from cable companies to help them meet this expectation.

"Typically, cable companies would power all their equipment without fuse panels. In other words, they'd buy their routers and transmission equipment with fuse panels built in," says Tim Hill, industry marketing manager for Telect. "Now they're buying multiplexers, and they're ordering our fuse panels to power their new equipment used to deliver telephony services.

This shift will help cable companies expand beyond their traditional product boundaries and position themselves as comprehensive communications providers.

"In this age of convergence, people are staking their claim as market leaders. But to do that, they have to show that they can offer certain levels of service," says Harley Kudler, research consultant for Find/SVP. "They're going to need a way to provide reliable power. The cable TV industry historically has had difficulty in providing reliable service because of power outages. So these service providers are going to have to take special interest in system design, and power is going to be one of the critical elements.

There are challenges on virtually every front in terms of power consumption and delivery. Like corporate America itself, the task is to operate leaner, smarter and more efficiently.

Pat Blake is a freelance writer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her e-mail address is B814@aol.com.

Like other telecom sectors, it's a time of change in terms of fueling a network. Power must be clean as well as reliable. The older mechanical switches did not require the level of filtering needed to accurately power active components. Equipment is being accessed from the front only, reflecting today's tight quarters.

With the growing numbers of telecom players, facility space is tight in many camps. Not only are systems expected to be more compact, but they often have to withstand harsh outdoor elements-a fact not wasted on Lucent Power Systems.

The company developed a ready-made family of compact power systems that can fit neatly in a slot only 5 in. high by 12 in. deep. The CPS 2000 and its big sister, the CPS 4000, are fully contained power systems-excluding the batteries-and are designed for remote applications such as local loop access or, in the case of the CPS 4000, for wireless networks.

Built tough, the CPS can handle temperature extremes from -40° to 50° C with no cooling system. When provided with 158 linear feet per minute of air, that maximum temperature threshold jumps to 75° C.

"The bells and whistles are what we are selling with this product," says Tim Conway, product marketing manager for Lucent Power Systems. "This is not intended for someone who is looking for a 25¢-a-watt power unit. This is intended to be used with some backup mechanism, whether it be batteries or generators. It is intended to provide the full power system needs to remotely deployed systems.

The CPS 2000 and 4000 are specified at 48 V and 24 V, respectively. Lucent also is working on broadband applications for both Pacific Bell and Bell Atlantic that use a 90 V, 1 Hz system. Because broadband systems are still relatively young, standards are still being defined for power requirements.

"Many people are deploying 60 V, 60 Hz systems, which is a carry-over from cable television," Conway says. "We have gone to 90 V to get maximum reach without having to severely current-limit the outputs, and 1 Hz, which provides the capability of powering coax. We also are preparing offerings of higher-voltage systems up to 130 V." The form and function of power equipment has kept pace with the wireless shift from analog-only to concurrent analog and digital formats, even if that has meant placing equipment on the roof or in a small remote cabinet. "There has been an evolution over the last 10 to 15 years in the size and weight of power equipment," says Matt Phillips, director of partnership relations for AT&T Wireless. "We're building our sites in areas that are a lot smaller and, therefore, have space restrictions.

"Weight has always been a factor in that the original technologies were extremely heavy, were harder to install and put a lot more stress on the floors. So, there may have been additional construction requirements," Phillips says.

"Some of these original products required regular maintenance and were very specialized in the type of expertise and safety needs. The evolution has now made it more of a maintenance-free type of product.

Equipment manufacturers and telecom engineers have a mutually beneficial relationship. Each relies on the other to get the job done. Engineers expect vendors to respond appropriately to the evolving needs of power systems. Vendors count on input from engineers who have their hand on the pulse of an operating network.

"Most people who deal with power and power distribution are being led by the engineers who are developing the racks and the equipment that's going into the office," says Jim Poitevin, product manager for Telect, which makes power distribution fuse panels. "Then the engineers will come back to us with their specific needs, saying, 'I have so many circuits, so much wattage. I need it fused in this particular way.' And you come up with a system all in one unit. In the past, they had the luxury of room, and they were able to put more than one unit in.

"Real estate, and by that I mean the number of pieces of equipment you can put in a rack, is at a premium now," Poitevin says. "Engineers don't want things in multiple pieces. They want it down to minimal rack spaces and to function completely in that space.

"The problem is that during the design phase, a lot of times power is one of the last things that is thought about. A rack may be all together. The cross connect equipment or repeaters are ready to go, and then it's, 'Oh, by the way, we need power and we need it this way.' That happens because power, in a way, is a minor thing when you look at the rack in terms of cost. But it is a very major component if you don't have it."