Even the New York Times withholds the address

Tue Nov 19 20:10:42 UTC 2002

Thus spake "blitz" <blitz at macronet.net>
> >Right now, people put the generators and the fuel in the same building
> >because it is virtually impossible to install your own neighborhood power
> >cabling. But there are few disaster scenarios in which a PoP would be
> >undamaged at the same time as the nearby powerstation is out of action or
> >disconnected.
>
> Transformer failure, underground cable failure, water main failure, street
> collapse, all come to mind.

We're all too familiar with backhoes taking out our fiber, now they're going
to take out our "on-site" power backup as well?  No thanks.

> If the entire town goes dark, most customers are dark as well.

Arguable.  Your POP may be many miles away from your customers, who aren't
seeing any power problems at all.  Widespread power outages are rare; it's
much more common for a few blocks here and there to lose power, whether from
rotating blackouts or severe weather.  Let's give the electric folks a
little credit here.

> Problem is there isn't a whole lot of new planned building going on, most
> "hotels' are retrofits of older structures, their location such because of
> their proximity to the customer base/infrastructure. Youre stuck with
> what's available, and then limited by the particular building's design
etc.
> In an ideal world there would be redundant power, water, sewer, fuel,
> served at two or more entrance points at each building, everyone would
> connect to each other via multiple access points on opposite sides of
their
> buildings..everything else is a mitigation of the lack of  a perfect
solution.

Agreed.  Every carrier "hotel" I've seen (admittedly few for this audience)
is an older office building which has been gradually overtaken by telcos
looking for cheap floor space in downtown areas.  Adding redundant fuel,
water, sewer, electric entrances, plus somehow shipping all that stuff
across town to "safe" areas no longer meets the economic constraints.  It'd
be cheaper to move the entire carrier hotel to the "safe" area and forget
having offsite power.

S