By Bradley L Johnston, Warner Cable Communications, Inc.
Outages are probably the cable industry's most important operating issue. This paper will examine the following:
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Importance of outages and the impact on business.
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Customer acceptable performance.
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Outage definition and detection.
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Opportunities for significant reductions.
In 1990 CableLabs established an outage reduction task force. Much of the information presented in this paper comes from the work of this task force and its very capable members. It is the author's point of view that significant reductions, 50% or greater, can be made in outages in the next 12 months with minor modifications to the equipment and plant configurations now in use. Outage reductions of some 50% are required to gain customer loyalty and a rating of excellence. Additionally, it is reasonable to anticipate even greater reductions in the 1992-93 time frame by isolating trunk powering from commercial power and ensuring that all equipment is highly reliable.