DC powering of Internet certifies for telephony

Telephony faces new great changes. One paradigm, still current, was established at the beginning of automation in the 1920s. That was when the central battery system was introduced enabling telephones to be powered over large distances, 3-5 km from the telephone exchange. The central battery system was a great step forward, leading to a dramatic increase of service level, availability performance and reliability in telephony. It helped subscribers to make their calls without the need of public power supply or local batteries and at the same time made the telephony system into a very reliable, life-saving, emergency and safety system of great benefit to the entire society. The “lifeline” was born. This quality of telephone technology must not be underrated. If possible, it should be defended and maintained. The present technical development, with datacom, broadband, IP telephony via the Internet, PCs and optical fibre etc., decreases availability performance, reliability and if not independently powered, the “lifeline” function. From the point of view of performance availability and power supply, the present technological development will bring us back to the times of the local battery unless the power people take action. This paper describes a possible solution to this problem, by partly going back to DC powering systems, and shows what to do to give Internet and IP telephony the same functionality and availability as plain old telephony service (POTS), when it comes to power supply