France Telecom latest trends in central office power

The aim of France Telecom is primarily to offer cost-effective telecommunication services. In that respect, R&D efforts are primarily oriented towards those power issues being no longer regarded as core business. For that reason, technical expertise is now within the department operating the network. Powering systems essential requirements deal with highest availability at lowest costs, whether related to investment, operation or maintenance. This involves adequate configurations based basically on off-the-shelf products, still redundancy and modularity, but also improved local and remote monitoring. Another key factor is a closer relationship with the supplier, whose responsibility in terms of system overall performance is much higher than in the past, and also a better cooperation between our functional specification activities and the supplier market survey and R&D activities. Both DC and AC are used, the latter being supplied by means of UPSs. One challenge is the adaptation of those systems to specific site constraints, such as gelified batteries, existing monitoring systems or building management. Expectations in terms of future improvements will be battery management (e.g, battery automatic and periodic discharges), energy efficiency and electrical energy cost savings (e,g, by means of negociated contracts with electricity suppliers), environmental issues, safety, AC UPS monitoring, correction of power factors