NBN could create a multi-million battery environmental headache

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 16 September 2009 10:49

IT Industry - Strategy

NBN Co CEO, Mike Quigley has foreshadowed that the customer equipment for the network will have battery backup to ensure telephone services operate in the event of power failure. These would need replacing every few years, and could end up in landfill.

He told his first press briefing that NBN Co's initial thinking on network architecture was that the network would terminate at an ONT (optic network termination) on the outside of a customer's house and would be provided with battery backup "So we can ensure that lifeline serves are maintained."

iTWire also understands that the ONT would be equipped with an analogue telephone adaptor, so that a standard telephone could be plugged directly into it.

The inclusion of battery backup would increase the upfront and operating costs significantly, has the potential to impose a huge burden on the environment and is not required in current regulations.

In a briefing on NBN last month Colin Goodwin, Ericsson Australia's broadband strategy manager, said: "We think it would be terrible if batteries were mandated. If people need one they can provide it themselves."

According to Goodwin "Batteries have a very short life, one to two years on an outside wall and three to four years indoors...and if you had the responsibility for replacing them over to end users there is every possibility of millions of batteries ending up in landfill, and they are quite unnecessary...Let [a battery] be in there as an option but don't mandate it."

Goodwin said that many of the initial greenfield FTTH networks in Australia used backup batteries, "because they think they have to, but that is not true it is not required by law."

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