Standards for monitoring and control of telecommunications power systems

Highly automated and geographically diverse networks of networks depend on management and interoperability of equipment from numerous vendors and introduction of new technologies with existing platforms. Network management systems that were introduced in the 1980s were unable to communicate across the diverse networks and jeopardized interoperability. This realization drove the International Telecommunications Union to develop the open systems Telecommunications Management Network Standards for network management systems. Though widely accepted, the impact of these equipment and protocol standards is a concern to power management system architects. Power management standards are a certainty-its only a matter of when and what. The author discusses the standardisation in telecommunications, telecommunication network management, and the power management perspective. A proposal is made for Intelec to sponsor a Network Power Management Forum as a vehicle to coalesce these concerns and present them to standards development bodies