The story below illustrates one of the major issues facing L&W customers across America, the end of the sub T-1 analog circuits, often referred to in the utility industry as "voice grade" circuits. For many utilities these circuits are the backbone of their SCADA networks, for multiple reasons. The most significant is that analog, non-routed circuits, are currently outside NERC/CIP compliance requirements. Even better, for the most part these circuits have worked very well for a very long time.
But when they do have issues, the phone companies simply don't have much talent left in their maintenance organizations that have any analog circuit knowledge, let alone experience at properly testing and terminating the circuits. When they break the fix is never quick, rarely done correctly, and in many instances these circuits continue to deteriorate once they are "repaired". This creates a maintenance nightmare that can often continues for days or weeks.
Analog point to point circuits are often used in transmission relay "protection" schemes and SCADA networks but change is being forced on the industry by the carriers.
If your utility is not yet dealing with it, you soon will be. It is time now to start thinking through a transition strategy.
Marc
Sandy-ravaged
regions will never get landlines back
Much of Verizon's landline infrastructure on New York's
Fire Island was destroyed during Superstorm Sandy and the telecom will not be
repairing the old technology.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Last fall,
Superstorm Sandy wiped out landline telephone service for thousands of people.
Many of them are never getting those landlines back.
Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) is still in the process of
repairing the telephone infrastructure that was damaged by the massive storm in
late October. But in many cases, the telecom giant is replacing the old copper-based
systems with new technologies -- including wireless.
Those changes are coming for the industry as a whole,
whether or not telecom giants like Verizon and AT&T (T, Fortune 500) want them to. And they were coming
long before Sandy struck. The parts needed to repair the old landline
technology are hard to find, sending companies to some odd places to purchase
equipment, such as eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500).
"It can't be that our critical infrastructure is
relying on eBay for replacement parts," said Bob Quinn, head of AT&T's
regulatory affairs.
Manufacturers that once made the required components, such
as Nortel and Lucent, have gone out of business or been bought out, noted
Danielle Coffey, a vice president at the Telecommunications Industry
Association.
"It's not only eBay, there's a whole secondary market
for these parts," she said.
That's because landlines are a dying business. Many
customers have switched to cell phones or VoIP services like Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) Skype to make calls. More than 36%
of Americans use cell phones as their only telephone service, about ten times
the rate from a decade ago, according to a Centers for Disease
Control study.
Still, many telephone customers in Sandy-ravaged areas are
displeased about the prospect of losing their landlines.
On Fire Island, N.Y., off the southern coast of Long
Island, Verizon is replacing its copper landlines with a wireless telephone
system called Voice Link. The new system consists of a small modem-sized device
that plugs into an electrical outlet and a standard telephone jack in your wall
at home. That device connects to Verizon's wireless cellular network, which
brings phone service and a dial tone to the existing cord or cordless phones in
the home. Customers can use it to make calls, and it and offers services like
call waiting, caller ID and voice mail.
But, at least for now, Voice Link can't connect customers
to the Internet. That means medical alert services often used by senior
citizens will not work. Those kinds of systems allow a customer to press a
medical alert button immediately contacting a monitoring center. Alarm
services, fax machines, and DSL Internet won't work either.
Hundreds of Fire Island residents have filed complaints
with the New York Public Service Commission about the service.
"It's not quite ready for prime time," said
Harold Feld, the senior vice president of Public Knowledge, an advocacy group
that opposes the all-wireless Voice Link system. "If we do switch to
wireless as an alternative, then we want this wireless alternative to be as
good or better than what we have now."
Verizon offers the only telephone service on the island,
so the hundreds of residents of the popular vacation spot have little choice
but to accept Verizon's Voice Link plan. Verizon said it intends to improve the
system as time goes on.
Fire Island is a "unique situation," said Tom
Maguire, the senior vice president for national operations at Verizon. Wireless
is not the only path forward for swapping out copper lines for new technology.
AT&T and Verizon in many cases are replacing copper with fiberoptic cable
and upgrading their networks from a series of routers and switches to a modern
digital network.
But Fire Island isn't the only place where Verizon is
installing Voice Link. The company began working on the Voice Link system well
before the storm, testing it in places like Florida and Virginia as a way to
connect customers without having to repair existing copper lines.
In areas other than Sandy-ravaged communities, Maguire
said, the Voice Link system will be available as an option -- and not every
customer is a suitable candidate. It is for people who do not want DSL Internet
service and do not have services like alarm and life support systems. And if a
Verizon technician goes to a home to install Voice Link and there is weak
cellular network signal, Verizon would in that case repair the copper wire
instead of installing the wireless system.
Verizon has deployed Voice Link in Mantoloking, N.J.,
which was also heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy, and the company has plans to
deploy it in areas like the Catskills where the copper infrastructure is badly
damaged. 
Last week I was in Newark, Delaware visiting one of
our large utility clients. The client and I decided to get a quick bite
to eat before our 1:00 PM meeting. He introduced me to a local Beer Pub
not far from their office. Two Stones run by Michael "Stigz"
Stiglitz is in a corner strip center just next to a convenience store. It
is a place I would have never gone into if I were "looking" for
a good place to eat but this customer, who has become a good friend, said
"trust me Marc". So we went in and had an awesome meal. Now I am not a
beer drinker but if you are, Two Stones has what the aficionados tell me is a
world class selection of beers from around the area and the world.
However what happened to impress me on this visit was the chicken and
sausage gumbo. And while I have no clue what a good beer, or bad beer for
that matter, tastes like (they all taste nasty to me), I do consider myself to
be a gumbo connoisseur and the Two Stones gumbo
rates right up there with my Uncle Clearance's High Island, Tx fish camp gumbo.
