Comcast outages continue even in areas with PG&E power restored

Thu Oct 17 00:08:19 UTC 2019

On 10/16/19 4:04 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
> After some poking around, I found this gizmo. It says that it can use 
> between 1-8 pairs to power it from the co. If there was already a home 
> run to the co (which is almost certainly true in my case), it seems like 
> that would be a cheaper option? Then you just have one diesel generator 
> at the co that charges the batteries.

Yep, things like this are a great option if you're overbuilding existing 
copper plant with fiber.  The old copper gets relegated to duty as a 
power carrier, and the fiber moves the bits to the DSLAM.  As another 
poster said, you just keep pushing these out to keep loop lengths down 
and get the bandwidth available to the end user up.

G.FAST is the next iteration of this sort of thing.  You run fiber all 
the way to the ped at the curb or even into the building for 
multi-dwelling applications then re-use the existing drop to get into 
the customer prem.  4-8 ports is common on these types of things.  Many 
support either remote span power using the old copper plant or sometimes 
also reverse power from the customer prem which is really handy if your 
a pure-play fiber carrier re-using existing customer-owned copper 
infrastructure or if your copper plant has rotted to the point that 
you're loathe to put 190VDC on it for a few miles from the nearest 
powered RTU or CO.

The actual power that's needed per port is usually pretty small.  Maybe 
a dozen watts or so.  There's obviously a base load on the unit, so the 
more ports you have lit the lower that per-port number will go with 
diminishing returns.  It's low enough that, at 190VDC, you can feasibly 
power things over a mile or more with just a few pairs of existing 24AWG 
outside copper without the voltage drop or power loss and cable heating 
being too bad.
-- 
Brandon Martin