ATIS Releases Standard on Protecting Telecom Links

ATIS has announced the release of a standard describing measures that provide a baseline level of protection for the interconnecting links of telecommunications networks against geographic and local environmental conditions.

The measures are intended to help provide protection from damage caused by specific physical stresses and radiation effects, ATIS said. They were developed by the ATIS Network Interface, Power, and Protection Committee’s Network Electrical Protection subcommittee (NIPP-NEP).

“This document supports the White House National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) recommendation that a series of standards be developed by industry experts to consider the effects of HEMP (High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse) incidents,” said Phillip Havens chair of the ATIS NIPP-NEP subcommittee. “This specific standard defines practices for maintaining the reliability of the telecommunication networks during extreme physical threats.”

The standard’s protection measures apply to the telecommunications links that interconnect environmentally controlled centers of networks including feeder and local distribution plant. The links are optical fiber, metallic-conductor or coaxial cables of trunk, feeder and local distribution plant. They include connections and repeater points that are on towers, antennas, poles or in manholes and pedestals and that are not necessarily environmentally controlled.

The terminations of the links in environmentally controlled structures and their power sources are included but the structures themselves and their contents are excluded, ATIS said.

The standard addresses protection against such physical threats as vibration, water penetration, temperature, fire, lightning, wind, ice, construction stresses, corrosion, loss of telecommunications power systems and radiation effects. The radiation effects cover electromagnetic interference from transmitting antennas, solar activity and limited nuclear disaster.

ATIS www.atis.org

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