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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical NFPA 76 Standard for the protection of telecommunications facilities
The folks at NFPA are at it again. They've developed NFPA 76, Standard
for the protection of telecommunication facilities.
Which would be fine, the telephone companies can go off and do their own
thing. The problem is the document scope expands beyond just telephone
central offices.
"Standard proves minimum requirements for fire protection of
telecommunication facilities, where telephone, data, cellular,
internet, and video services are rendered."
See that word "Internet." While they may have intended to only
apply it to the traditional telephone Central Office, the scope
statement is far too broad for this standard.
You can tell the document was written by a bunch of old-line telephone
folks. They make distinctions between ILECs ("These companies, who
have been in business for many years,") and CLECs ("The companies are
primarily start-up companies"). Such distinctions have no place in an
consensus standard document. Industry standards should apply equally
to all companies within an industry.
But perhaps the more distubing part of NFPA 76 is it incorporates by
refence non-industry consensus based standards such as NEBS. NEBS is
a proprietary standard published by Telcordia, originally developed
as a private standard by AT&T. It is even more inappropriate to apply
a standard such as NEBS to other industries such as the Internet, and
claim it is an "industry standard."
http://www.nfpa.org/doc_FAQ/76-p.pdf
How many ISPs would like the fire marshall to apply this standard
as written to their Internet facilities. If you don't comment,
they just might.
Oh, by the way, the deadline for comments is July 30, 2000.
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