A telecommunications buildings/power infrastructure in a new era of public networking

The growth of data communications and the Internet and the onset of convergence following worldwide divestitures and deregulation spawned a new era in networking and increased the number of competitive carriers and service providers. The new era network will be a convergent circuit switch and packet public network (PN) that will be able to transport and process voice, video, data and Internet traffic at higher speeds and lower cost than today's PSTN. Co-location mandated by the government to enhance competition is deemed to be expensive and restrictive by competitive carriers and service providers. This together with the exploding growth of the Internet, second lines and data communications spawned a new outsourcing industry comprising carrier hotels or telehousing and Internet Data Centers. These businesses render space for telecommunications equipment in buildings that they refurbish or construct to replicate a CO environment. It is impacting power in two ways. It has increased the demand for higher capacity CO power plants and energized the debate over the preferred powering for telecommunications; nonstop DC systems used in telephone offices or UPS protected AC systems used in data communications. Nonstop operation is key to Quality of Service which is a major concern as the PSTN evolves to the PN. The trend to outsourcing presents ILECs a timely opportunity to convert a cost center into a profit center by consolidating their huge investment in COs and POPs into business units that would lease equipment space to both incumbents and competitors.