Puerto Rico: Lack of electricity threatens telephone and internet services

Thu Oct 19 19:06:08 UTC 2017

On 2017-10-19 03:00, Sean Donelan wrote:

> not intended for long-term, continuous use.  The generators will need 
> maintenance and likely experience unscheduled failures the longer they're
> used.

Permanent duty diesel generators exist.  Many northern communities in
Canada run on them as their 7/24 power source.

It *shouldn't* have taken long after Maria for locals to know how much
damage there had been to electrical grid and that if it's gonna take
months to fix, you're gonna need constant duty generators.

What isn't clear to me is whether everything still depends on FEMA/army
help, or whether business is able to function autonomously and get their
own generators without the army confiscating them to be delieved to a
hospital instead.

And if you're a telco who is deprived of revenues because almost all
your customers are without power, do you spend your own money and effort
to try to get a permanent duty diesel generator to maintain your central
office, or do you wait for government to install one for you ?

It is one thing to be benevolent and wanting to have your network
backbone up, but financial realities of the cost of running a business
without revenues will eventually hit you when the disaster lasts for
months instead of days.