In order to safeguard continuity of residential voice communications and access to 911 during a power outage, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required service providers to make an option to purchase a battery backup capability available to subscribers. In February, the FCC started to require service providers to offer subscribers the option to purchase 24-hour standby backup power in addition the standard eight hours when they signed up for service.
The useful life of these batteries vary considerably – anywhere to from 2 to 10 years - depending on the manufacturer and environmental conditions. You don’t want to wait for a power outage, however, to determine that a subscriber’s backup battery has failed. But there are ways to proactively identify potential battery problems leveraging specific battery-related alarms. The Calix Remote Monitoring Service (RMS) can help you easily track battery alarms and assist in developing a plan to systematically identify and replace failing or defective batteries.
Each of the Calix systems generate specific alarms when a defective battery is detected.
| E7 AXOS and EXA | C7 | B6 | AE ONTs |
|---|---|---|---|
| ONT on battery | Battery missing | Faulty battery | ONT on battery |
| Low battery | Faulty battery | Low battery | |
| Battery missing | Battery missing | ||
| Faulty battery | Faulty battery |
Using the Alarm Severity Filtering capability in RMS, you can identify the combination of battery alarms that indicate a bad or missing battery. This allows you to look across all systems to identify which subscribers are generating these alarms. You can then generate a report on which devices are having problems. For more context to the problem, the reporting platform allows you to pull in additional data on the alarms such as description, count, first and last event timestamps, and location. You can use this information to develop a plan to replace defective units before that next power outage comes along and impacts your service.
This is just one of several use cases RMS supports to help you become more proactive in preventing service outages that can impact subscriber experience and brand reputation.
Check out this knowledge-based article in the Calix Community Remote Monitoring topic area for a step-by-step guide on generating reports for battery issues. To learn more about how you can take advantage of the Remote Monitoring Service, check out our web page or contact a Calix expert for a demonstration.