New concepts of reliability in powering the customer access network

The powering-related contribution to service unavailability on new and emerging distributed broadband networks in the customer loop is complex and there is a need to broaden the traditional view of the influence of tele-power provisioning on service delivery. Concepts of customer perceived service availability can be used to balance design options and reliability targets with powering costs and acceptable levels of grade-of-service due to power. At the residential customer level, it is unproductive to consider powering reliability in isolation or independent of the total service availability, and power reliability effort must be consistent with the total reliability requirements. In summary, this requires a topdown process, rather than the existing and traditional bottom-up style of power system reliability engineering.