Powering Telstra´s broadband and multimedia services

The authors briefly describe the evolution Telstra´s broadband and multimedia networks in Australia. They then discusses the power issues. Telstra has used traditional centralised DC power systems to power exchange equipment and basic telephony services to customers. With the advent of switchmode rectifier and VRLA battery technology, distributed power architectures are preferred as they provide improved power system availability by reducing points of failure both on the DC and the AC circuits. Distributed power also offers an integrated and modular solution to the diversity of growth. These networks have also accelerated the use UPS in exchanges to power computing, media storage and video headend facilities. In particular the authors discusses the powering of a single fibre passive optical network