which is a prime example of marketing nonsense

Understatement of the week.

What a load of codswallop,

Never heard if it before but it seems to be a thing.

https://www.edn.com/what-is-digital-electricity/

https://www.belden.com/blogs/digital-electricity-what-you-need-to-know

https://voltserver.com/digital-electricity/what-is-it/

https://www.powerelectronicsnews.com/digital-electricity-brings-intelligence-and-safety-into-power-transmission/

It says its 'safer' than mains wiring but from what I can see it is operating at 300-350VDC.

It says it's "touch safe" so I expect it would be 48VDC. 100V at a push.

A 5G radio for a "small cell" shouldn't need much power, right? 100W or so ought to be sufficient? 350V might be needed for a repeater in a 1000km submarine cable, but not for a few metres between a cabinet and a telegraph pole

Nearly choked on my coffee when I read "'digital electricity' allows power to be transmitted on a fibre optic cable" though! The marketing wonks at Vermin Media are either stoned or have been replaced by AI

The specs go up to 2kW so that would be an awful lot of amps and loss at 48V.

https://tessco-product-images-commerce-cloud-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/Resources/286695_214696_RX548_VSR.pdf

Voltage 310-350V (336V Nominal)

I assume they make it 'touch safe' with lots of monitoring.

Worth observing that it doesn't say for whom this is safe..

:)

" "touch safe" so I expect it would be 48VDC. 100V at a push

The UK spec for ELV is 'not greater than 50V AC' (roughly 71V DC). However 100V DC can kill you quite easily.

I've survived kV. ( [1]The breakdown field strength of air is ~3 kV/mm so any static spark you've been zapped by is guaranteed kV.) I imagine you could be killed at a few volts potential difference, if someone was determined enough. It's normally said to be the current that matters (I really wonder if it's really the power?) and high currents and high voltages tend to coincide, but it's not guaranteed.

[1] https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/AliceHong.shtml

The saying is "it's volts that jolts but mils that kills".

I once heard a story from an old electrical contractor about when he was called to some mansion in the scottish highlands that had its own 11kV substation. He says he had isolated the supply and locked the switchroom to work on the busbars (i guess probably he was on the 400V side) but hadn't reckoned on the janitor having a key, ignoring the sign saying Do Not Operate, and throwing it back on to make his tea.

The contractor was up a ladder with his hands on two different busbars at the time, but survived to tell the tale because apparently he was thrown clear like timmy from Jurassic Park..

Moral of the story: Always lock out with your OWN padlock

Could have been a tall tale of course, but nonetheless instructive

On the other end of the scale, I also knew an electrical engineer who said she wouldn't touch a 12V car battery, "cos its the current that kills you". I didn't argue - never a good idea with that one.

Don't just lock it out, but short the circuit to earth so that if anyone decides to take bolt cutters to your padlock and turn the circuit back on it blow the circuit instead of you.

And give the idiot behind the switch a bloody great fright / singed eyebrows to teach him never to do that again!

Pretty sure 48V DC can kill too, if you have thin skin and wet hands... Always keep one hand behind your back

I wouldn't want to touch 100V DC, however BS7671:2028 (IET wiring regs 18th ed) says in 414.1.1 (iii) limitation of voltage to 50V AC or 120V DC for SELV/PELV. I would guess this lower than expected limit for AC is because of the capacitance of the epidermis, which is not an issue for DC. I have had a few capacitively-coupled shocks and it stings a bit, but not as bad as being burned by a real shock.

Pretty sure 48V DC can kill too, if you have thin skin and wet hands... Always keep one hand behind your back

Yep. Or I was taught to keep hands in pockets. Better to trip over a cable and faceplant than grab a bus bar to prevent fall. But..

On the other end of the scale, I also knew an electrical engineer who said she wouldn't touch a 12V car battery, "cos its the current that kills you". I didn't argue - never a good idea with that one.

I confess I don't even like messing with car batteries having seen what happens when you short them. But having worked around high power stuff, I have a healthy fear of it and would much rather leave that stuff to people that know what they're doing. I know enough to be dangerous, and also kick some 'consultants' off-site for wanting to install $1m+ Juniper BFRs that would draw 160A with 30A cooker cable. Kinda pointed them at the fire suppression cylinders that cost around $50k a refill, and told them to go forth and multiply until they came back with a qualified electrician. I can't help thinking that the rush for EVs and charging infrastructure's going to lead to some Darwinian selection of sparkies, and probably keep the fire service in overtime.

"However 100V DC can kill you quite easily."

Being old enough to remember the batteries used with portable valve radios my experience was that 90V could be felt but was survivable.

"Nearly choked on my coffee when I read "'digital electricity' allows power to be transmitted on a fibre optic cable" though!"

Did you not read that it said:

[quote]

Hybrid Cables.' These are cables that include copper cores for the Volt-Server power transmission as well as fibres for connectivity.

[/end]

I did, but only after inhaling my coffee

Nearly choked on my coffee when I read "'digital electricity' allows power to be transmitted on a fibre optic cable" though! The marketing wonks at Vermin Media are either stoned or have been replaced by AI

And it'll be suitable for EV charging.

But it's all perfectly technically feasible. It simply needs, say, a 100kW laser launching into the fibre, and a 100kW photodiode at the other end to convert light back to power. Light to energy is much easier, especially if the connectors haven't been cleaned. This technology also has the advantage of minimising vandalism attempts, or at least repeat vandalism and makes it easier to identify criminals by standard DNA testing.

"The marketing wonks at Vermin Media are either stoned or have been replaced by AI"

They are just marketing people. They don't understand things like conductors and insulators.

They're Marketing people.

"They don't understand" was sufficient..

" operating at operating at 300-350VDC "

That just sounds like full wave rectified UK single phase mains -- 340V DC minus losses) -- nothing particularly "digital" about it.

Time division multiplexing of power and data. During the power slot the data part shuts off to avoid being zapped. But why would you need that if the data is on the fibre part of the "hybrid cable"? And "touch-safe"? Seems to be a clever automatic disconnect that detects loss of carrier and shuts it off, or maybe its just a DC sensitive RCD.

I mean obviously the green cabinets already receive power. Is the problem that they need a lot more power before they can bolt on the mini cell tower?

Ugly as *uck though. And the telcos wonder why people are fire-bombing the local infrastructure...

Does exist.

All you need is the right carpet and the right shoes. Walk around a bit, then get close enough to your victim and point at them.

Obviously square waves alternating between zero and +5v.

Could they not have just stuck it on the lamp post next to it rather than adding yet more unsightly street furniture?

The "digital electricity" might have been affected by the "digital light" coming from the "digital posted lamp".

This was what 5G was peddled as in the first place. It looks as if we now get yet another crop of poles. Once Voodoophone get into this my daughter might get a pole beside the box they planted right in front of her sloping bit of garden which can only be easily tended from the footpath. That'll accompany the street-light a few metres away against the entrance to her garage.

Voodoophone

Will have to remember that as my OH works for them though not involved with the mobile bit.

The usage was de rigueur back in the days when i worked for a competitor. "Zero range" was another.

They own the cabinet but not the lamppost.

So, no because ensuring 'appropriate community engagement has taken place' = NIMBY. No danger of getting anything installed if you have to get approval from the locals.

Quite.

In a quiet little suburban town, we were told that we would get 5G and even had letters through to announce it.

I was quite excited as the workplace where that was has AWFUL 3G/4G reception, as in it's almost impossible to make a call without walking outside and going down the road somewhat.

We got all the planning letters, all the notification, we were actually looking at getting a Netgear Nighthawk to act as a backup line of some substance (given BT's penchant to just keep increasing prices and cutting services).

There was already a pole and cabinet at the location, there's nothing nearby of any worth, there are no areas of outstanding natural beauty to ruin.

18 months later, it was killed by NIMBYs.

Probably the same ones who rent our facilities and then moan on a regular basis that they can't make calls and can't take credit cards (and, no, you're not using our Wifi to do that) while on the site.

"there are no areas of outstanding natural beauty to ruin."

Outstanding natural beuty is not required. Those fuggly things will ruin an eyesore.

Theoretically, yes. They could run both power and data from the cabinet to the lamp post and put the small cell at the top. The issue is that councils either do not want to allow Telcos to do so or that the council have outsourced the street lamps to a third party with no interest in engaging with 3rd parties.

In my experience in property/asset maintenance - Every hierarchical step of the council is either treading water and barely managing to keep the posts from falling over, or too executive to know where their nose is on their face.

Actually manifesting progress in these large institutions is borderline impossible. Your best bet is to go to an impressionable high up person and convince them it was their idea (It's who you know)

That's pretty much the case. I've worked for a third party PFI highways lighting contractor, and back in 2015 we hoped this would be a nice income stream, as well as facilitating better mobile connectivity. In practice it was difficult to get the telcos (and often their outsourced mast providers!) to engage, it was difficult to get councils to engage, the bug bear of anti-5G cretins made elected councillors nervous (and to an extent infrastructure managers). Because of the cost of trenching in made up ground, to be viable it needed the happy coincidence of a cabinet within a few metres of a suitable lamp column - if more than a few metres, the cost of a new column is less than the trenching. Broad brush numbers, £1,000 for a brand new column to be installed not including the aerials, £100 per metre for trenching and reinstatement in made up ground, and bear in mind there's a perceived cost to relying on somebody else's column. Not all existing lighting columns are suitable - old ones may be rusty and near life expired, newer ones may already be covered in wireless connectivity for managing the street lights, for the police's national spy camera network, or with a surfeit of roadsigns (there's only so much weight and wind load allowable on a lighting column). Factor in that network operators don't need a mini-mast everywhere there's an available and suitable column, and very quickly the practicality of doing this repeatably at scale melted away. For a demonstration case it's easy - quite a few of these across the country. But when trying to make a good business case to companies investing billions in their mast networks it looked more noise than substance, and the time and effort in getting a handful of lighting columns used as mini masts is no longer warranted.

Some might assert that existing telco ducting could be cheaply used between any suitable cabinet and a lamp, but that leads into into feasibility surveys including third party infrastructure for each site, possible wayleaves of PIA agreements if the network doesn't own any ducting and all the costs then wiped out putative savings. Which is exactly why VMO2 put up the mast as in the photo - quick, simple, cheap, within their control other than for a simple streetworks permission for the modest digging required.

"The issue is that councils either do not want to allow Telcos to do so or that the council have outsourced the street lamps to a third party with no interest in engaging with 3rd parties."

I'd have thought that these days most councils would be only too eager to rake money for this (as would 3rd parties) so either offering money hasn't been tried or they can't find the right option in their Oracle/SAP/whatever systems to process the transactions.

"I'd have thought that these days most councils would be only too eager to rake money for this (as would 3rd parties) so either offering money hasn't been tried or they can't find the right option in their Oracle/SAP/whatever systems to process the transactions."

Given the relatively low cost to the network operator of putting up their own column, the rent they'd pay per to rent space on a lighting column is very low - say £80 a year per column or less. Income agreements for attachments typically specify a fifty fifty split between council and PFI operator, and it starts looking like chicken feed pretty quickly, especially given the limitations on suitability of columns noted above. The PFI operator then has to pay the council monthly (see published PFI contracts for highways lighting) bill the network and receive the networks payments. Most streetlighting is provided by upper tier authorities (county and unitary councils), if you can find 500 suitable coincidences of cabinet, lighting column and network need, that's £20k. Now compare that to an upper tier authority budget (using my fairly representative CC as an example) which for a rural shire is in the £400m-500m range - and for the likes of Birmingham around £3bn.

It's a nice idea that simply doesn't scale well, nor save enough money.

Grey is not good.

ISTR an experiment was carried out where ne'er do wells tended to congregate around cabinets like these with their laughing gas canisters. Apparently painting the cabinets pink reduced the tendency to use them as a place to hang out.

Aha, now I know who's been installing the grey cabinets around our estate lately.

The beige ones are Voodoophone.

It's been colour matched, not color matched. The all-pervading grey is the give-away (and in that sense grey *is* the best colour to use to blend in...).

Notably though it's not been colour matched with the pre-existing lamp post (itself designed to blend in with the greenery that was presumably there at one point), which it could have done by simply using it. It might also have meant a cheaper installation which didn't make the street clutter worse.

Surely you mean "Gray"?

No, we are in the UK, so it is grey, not gray[sic].

"grey *is* the best colour to use to blend in"

The green box on the corner near my daughter's house was well enough blended in for the car driver not to see it.

Following the recent trend of data infrastructure being vandalised, we have decided to place more data infrastructure right next to the cabinet, but this time in the open with no lock, and at street level so it can be abused more easily.

Maybe the hope is they will attack the pole and leave the cabinet. The pole is great. It's got a cabinet next to it for standing on and reaching the top, and it's got a light next to it so you can see clearly what you are vandalising.

Maybe the hope is they will attack the pole and leave the cabinet

I'd call that the cat scratch post principle, and I suspect it has the same failure rate..