The Evolution of Telecommunications and the Impact on CO Power Architectures

The evolution of telecommunications in the USA and its impact on CO Powering architectures is reviewed in two time eras: prior to divestiture of AT&T in 1984 and ten years after divestiture. A possible scenario for the next ten years is also presented. Advances in technology together with competition has spurred the introduction of digital electronics, fiber and wireless to create telecommunications networks with broad bandwidths and capable of providing an array of voice, data and image services to any place and any time. To support these networks, power technology has responded with distributed architectures and smaller, lighter, more flexible, more efficient and lower cost rectifiers, dc/dc converters, dc/ac inverters, and batteries more compatible with the new environment Power processing has steadily moved closer to the electronics; into system frames in COs and closer to the customer in the field. This distributed architecture together with microprocessors has spurred the development of power system controllers that will be integrated into end-to-end network system management.