It's about money (well, that and grounding): holding your "ground" in an old new environment

This is to explore the hotly debated issue over whether cellular, ATM or other new-technology telephone switching systems should operate in the isolated ground plane or the integrated ground plane topologies. Many engineers believe the integrated ground plane is more robust than the isolated ground plane and, thus, next technology switches should be integrated. The reasons stem from poor performance often experienced from isolated ground plane systems during lightning events as compared with digital cross-connect (DCC) and other systems residing in the integrated ground plane. Another camp would take the integrated ground plane to the next level, the mesh bonded network, literally a fortress of low impedance. Finally, a large body of engineering talent would assert that all telecom network systems-switching and transport perform better in isolated ground planes. The issues are at least as emotional and political as they are technical. There is, however, middle ground within this nettlesome debate because both camps employ numerous techniques to improve the reliability of electronic systems. Electronic systems increasingly are built to the same standards whether they are destined for either ground plane. The paper explores backgrounds, trends and generally accepted engineering principles and offers a pathway through this issue.