An assessment of commercial AC power quality: a fiber-in-the-loop perspective

If commercial AC voltage is used by local exchange carriers (LECs) for powering fiber-in-the-loop (FITL) systems, commercial power disturbances (outages and voltage/frequency variations) would interrupt telephone service to the customer unless back-up powering is provided. This is serious because customer expectations about the reliability of telephone services are very high-in particular, customers expect to use the telephone to notify the power company that the electricity is out. This paper provides a characterization of the frequency and duration of several categories of AC power disturbances that can have an impact on fiber-in-the-loop (FITL) service availability. The results are based on Bellcore´s analysis of power disturbance data collected from sites throughout the United States during the 1990-1992 time period