Iburst vs power outtages?

J

Jhbgirl

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It seems we get our signal from our neighbouring town and these days when our power comes back on theirs go off. I think that maybe their ups' on the towers don't have a chance to recharge between all the load shedding. Could this be cause for getting out of our contract? I mean we have a generator but we don't have internet because their towers don't work.
 
They will whine about it being beyond their control - but they can install a generator to provide power to the tower.

Might have a valid point, but IANAL.
 
Sounds like iburst have now taken to load shedding their towers.:eek:

As far as I remember either Ed or SG said that they had standby generators at their towers, and I also remember at least once they forgot to fill the tank with fuel.:rolleyes:

As for eskom, if they did not have these power failures (load shedding) then the whole power grid would collapse leaving the country in total darkness.:sick:
 
The trend I've seen with all the wireless providers is that they (in the past) didn't have enough gennie's for one per tower but rather a handful of floaters that got moved as the needs changed.

Unfortunately the load shedding moves around way too fast and there is no way they could keep up. I'm sure they are busy seriously considering a major investment in gen-sets but these things take time. And push up costs which no one in the SA Telecoms market is going to take lying down :sick:
 
iBurst are looking at putting in alternative power sources. I know this for a fact...we are talking milllions (tens of millions) for all the towers!
 
oceanmasterza said:
I worked as a tech for Iburst.

Not every base station has a generator. Some generators are moved from one base station to another. The generators only have about 5 litres of petrol which lasts about 4 to 6 hours.

The battery backup consists of 24 12v batteries which lasts around 6 hours.

When power goes down the NOC waits until the power on the batteries (monitored remotely by an ethernet link to the ups) is around 40% and then calls the tech to get to the site and make plans for starting the gennie.

Mosly the power comes back on in that time and one ends up riding up and down for nothing.. (I usually only get there when there's about 20 - 30% battery power left). I then ride out every 4 to 5 hours to fill the petrol, but seing the betteries are also charging in that time I actually have around 8 hours before the system would go down (increasing as batteries are recharged).

Some base stations have pc's and a modem for testing purposes and when connected to the ups take extra power changing the times slightly.

Also, when the basestation is linking to several others more then one wireless link can be present and this means more power consumption when there's a power failure.
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Going by what you have stated above, it would then stand to reason that during a power outage we would not experience any down time due to load shedding.

If that is the case, why then when there is load shedding do we experience an almost complete loss of signal (and not just when we are load shed in our area? Understandably there is not a genny at each tower, but if the standby time on the battery back-up is 6 hours, we should not experience outages in terms of signal.
 
Jhbgirl said:
It seems we get our signal from our neighbouring town and these days when our power comes back on theirs go off. I think that maybe their ups' on the towers don't have a chance to recharge between all the load shedding. Could this be cause for getting out of our contract? I mean we have a generator but we don't have internet because their towers don't work.
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After Sentech, Jhbgirl, I'd have thought that you'd never sign up for any long term contract again. Didyadoit ?
 
Iburst is not stingy.. if there is a prob they will spend the $ to fix it
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Oh really? That's a big fat joke. They still owe me money :mad:

A lot of basestations out there run off of batteries only. Where I live, when the power goes out for longer than 5-6 hours, the site goes down. The BS in my area is in the back yard of a private home.
 
Hi guys.

All comments noted. I will do some checking.

Hope you all had a great long weekend.


Thanks for this feedback.
 
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